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X 






OUTLIE"ES 



HISTORY OF FRANCE. 



FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT. 



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^^■ 



OUTLINES 



HISTORY OF FRANCE 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE OUTBREAK OF 
THE REVOLUTION. 

AN ABRIDGMENT OF M. GUIZOT'S POPULAR 
N ., 

HISTORY OF FRANCE. 



WITH CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX, HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL TABLES, PORTRAITS, ETC. 

GQSTAVE MASSON, (B.A. Unia^ C^all. ' 

OFFICIER D'ACADEMIE, ASSISTANT MASTER AND LIBRARIAN, HARROW SCHOOL, 
AND MEMBEE OF THB~"SOCIErE DE L'HISTOIRE DE FRANCE." 



BOSTON: 
ESTES AND LAURIAT, 

299 TO 305 ■Washington Street. 
1881. 



TO 

THE REV. H. M. BUTLER, D.D., 

HEAD MASTBK, 

AND 10 THE ASSISTANT MASTEJIS OP HARRO'W SCHOOL, 

THESE 

"OUTLINES OF THE HISTOUY OF FRANCE" 

ABE EESPECTFULLT DEDICATED 
BT THEIIi EAITUJFUL SEKVANT AND COLLEAGUE, 

GUSTAVE MASSON. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

m. guizot (frontispiece) ' 

Gerberx ........ 62 

Sire de Joinville 90 

Charles V. ...... . 162^^ 

Bertrand Du Guesclin 168 

John the Fearless ., . . . . .174 

Jacques Cceur . . . . . . . 196 

Louis XII. 226 "^ 

Francis 1 242 "^ 

Henry II 306 

Henry IV 320 "^ . 

Sully 332^ 

Louis XIV 376 ' 

Pascal 420 

BossuET . , 422 

Peter Corneille 428 

Louis XFV. in his old age 442 

The Eegent Orleans ..... 448 

Cardinal Dubois 454 

Louis XV 472 ^ 

Madame de Pompadour . . ... 496 

BuFFON 524 

Necker at Saint Ouen 550 

Marie Antoinette 558 



CMONOLOGICAI TABLE. 



b, d,jl, stand respectively for horn, died, and flourished. 



B.C. 

587 The Gaula in Germany and Italy. 

340 Tlie Gauls in Greece. 

283 A Roman army destroyed by tlie 
Gauls at Aretium. 

279 The Gauls near Delphi. 

241 The Gauls attacked by Eumenes and 
Attalus. 

154 Marseilles calls in the assistance of 
the Romans. 

122 Sextius founds Aquae Sextise in Pro- 
vence. 

118 Foundation of Narbo Martius. 

102 Marius defeats the Teutons in two 
battles. 

100 Birth of Julius Ceesar. 
'68 Ccesar obtains the government of 
-~ Cisalpine Gaiil for five years, 

Attacks the Helvetii. 
51 Gaul made a Roman province, 

A.D. 

70 Civilis surrenders. 

79 Death of Sabinus and of his wife 

Eponina. 
273 The Emperor Aurelian in Gaul. 

„ Battle of Ghalons-sur-Marne. 
277 Frobus goes on an expedition to 

Gaul, in which country the Franks 

settle about this time. 
305 The Franks defeated by Constantius 

in Gaul. 
355 The Franks take Cologne, and de- 
stroy it ; Julian named prefect of 

Transalpine Gaul. 
357 Julian defeats six German kings at 

Straaburg. 
413 The kingdom of the Burgundians 

begins under Gondicarius. 
420 Phararooud supposed to begin the 

kingdom of the Franks. 
426 Aetius defeats the Franks on the 

bordet's of the Rhine. 
438 The Franks obtain a permanent 

footing in Gaul. 
451 Battle of Chalons. 
458 Childeric, king of the Franks, de- 
posed by his subjects. 
462 The Ripuaiian Franks take Cologne 

from the Romans. 



463 Childeric recalled by the Franks. 
477 Marseilles, Aries, and Aix occupied 

by the Visigoths. 

Merovingian dynasty. 

481 Death of Childeric ; his son Clovis 

succeeds to the throne. 
486 Battle of Soissons gained by Clovia 

against Siagrius, the Roman 

general in Gaul. 
493 Marriage of Clovis with Clotilda. 
496 Clovis, king of Prance, is baptized 

after the battle of Tolbiac. 
501 Gondebaud, king of the Burgundians, 

publishes his code, entitled " La 

Loi Gombette." 
507 Battle of Youille, near Poictiers ; 

Alaric is defeated and slaiu by 

Clovis. 

509 Clovis receives the titles of Patrician 

and Consul. 

510 Clovis makes Paris the capital of the 

French dominions. 

511 Clovis dying, his dominions are 

divided among his children. 
524 Battle of Voiron ; Chlodomir, king 
(jf Orleans, is killed by Gondeniar, 
king of Burgundy. 

531 Thierry, king of Meiz, seizes Thurir - 

gia from Hermanfroi. 

532 The kingdom of Burgundy enc.s, 

being conquered by Childebert 
and Clotaire, kings of Paris and 
Soissons. 

556 Civil wars in France ; the dominions 
of Theodebald, king of Metz, are 
divided between Clotaire, king of 
Soissons, and Childebert, king of 
Paris. 

558 Childebert dies, and is succeeded by 
his son Clotaire, who becomes 
sovereign of all France. 

560 Chramn, natural son of Clotaire, 
defeated and burnt alive. 

567 Death of Charibert, king of Paris ; 
his territories are divided among 
his brothers ; but the city of Paris 
is held by them in common. 



History of France. 



557 Rivalry of fhe two queens, Brune- 
haut Hnd Fredegonde. 

612 Theodebert II., king of Austrasia, 

defeated and confined in a monas- 
tery by Ills brother, Thierry II., 
king of Orleans and Burgundy. 

613 Clotaire king of all France ; death 

of Brunehaut, widow of Sigebert, 
king of Austrasia. 

628 Clotaire II., king of France, dies, 
and is succeeded by his son Dago- 
bert. 

631 Childeric, son and successor of 
Charibert, poisoned by Dagobert, 
who renmains sole monarch of 
France. 

638 Dagobert, king of France, is suc- 
ceeded by his two sons, Sigebert 
II. in Austrasia, and Clovis II. 
in Neustria and Burgundy. The 
Maires du Palais begin to usurp 
the royal authority. 

678 Death of Dagobtrt II., king of 
Neustria ; Martin and Pepin 
Iteristal, Mayors of the palace. 
Thierry III. is suffered to enjoy 
the title of king of Austrasia. 

691 Clovis III. king. 

715 Charles Martel, son of Pepin Heris- 
tal, goveins as Mayor of the 
palace. 

717 Charles Martel defeats king Chil- 
peric II. and the Neustrians. 

732 Charles Martel defeats the Saracens. 

735 Charles Martel becomes master of 
Aquitaine. 

737 On the death of of Thierry III., 
Charles Martel governs France, 
with the title of Duke, for six 
years. 

741 Chnrles Martel dies, and is succeeded 

by his sons, Carloman in Aus- 
trasia and Tburingia, and Pepin 
in Neustria, Burgundy and Pro- 
vence. 

742 Pepin places Childeric III. on the 

throne of Neustria and Burgundy. 
•^Charlemagne 6. 

Carloringian dynasty. 

752 Pepin deposes Childeric, confines 
him in a monastery, and is conse- 
crated at Soissons. 

754 Pepin's expedition into Italy. 

758 Pepin reduces the Saxons in Ger- 
many. 

768 Pepin dies at St. Denis, and ia suc- 
ceeded bj'^ his sons Charles and 
Carloman. 
771 Carloman dyingin November,Charle- 



magne remains sovereign of all 
France. 

772 Charlemagne begins the Saxon war, 

which continues thirty years. 

773 Ciiarlemagne defeats the troops of 

Didier, king of the Lombards, and 
lays siege to Pavia. 

774 Surrender of Pavia, and capture of 

Didier. 
770 The abbey church of St. Denis 

near Paris founded. 
778 Battle of Roucevaux. 
78 i Charlemagne defeats Witildnd and 

the Saxons. 
791 Charlemagne defeats the Avari, in 

Pannonia 
793 The Saracens ravage Gallia Nar- 

bonnensis, where they are at 

length defeated by Charlemagne. 
800 Charlemagne crowned king of Italy 

and emperor of the West. 
805 Partition of the empire. 

813 Charlemagne associates his son 

Louis, surnamed the Debounair, 
or the Pious, to the Western Em- 
pire. 

814 Charlemagne dies ; succeeded as em- 

peror and king by his son Louis. 
817 Louis divides his empire among his 
childien. 

840 Louis the Debonnair dies ; his eldest 

son, LotliHire, has Italy, with the 
title of Emperor ; Charles the 
Bald the kingdomof France ; and 
Louis, that of Bavaria or Ger- 
many. 

841 Battle of Fontanet. 

848 New partition of the French do- 
minions in an assembly at Thion- 
ville. 

844 Charles the Bald defeated in Aqui- 
taine by Pepin II. 

877 Charles the Bald poisoned His son, 
Louis II., surnamed the Staia- 
merer, succeeds him. 

879 Louis the Stammerer dies, and is 

succeeded by his sons Louis 111. 
and Carloman. Boson seizes 
Dauphiny and Provence, and 
begins the kingdom of Aries. 

880 The Normans invade France, and 

destroy several abbeys. 

881 Louis III., king of France, defeats 

the Normans at Saucourt. 

882 Louis III. of France dies, leaving his 

brother Carloman sole sovereign. 
Hincmar d. 

887 Palis besieged by the Normans. 

888 On the death of Charles his do- 

minions are divided into five 
kingdoms : Eudes becomes king 



Chronological Table. 



XI 



of Western France and Aqui- 

taine. 
893 Charles the Simple crowned king of 

France. 
898 Charles the Simple is recognized 

king of France. 

905 The Normans take the towTi of 

Rouen. 

906 The Normans conquer Colentin and 

and Maine, and ravage Brittany, 
Picardy, and Champagne. 
912 Charles the Simple cedes to Normans 
a part of Neustria, which thence- 
forward is called Normandy. 

922 Eobert elected and anointed king 

of France at Rheims. 

923 Eodolph, duke of Burgundy, is elected 

and crowned king of France. 

Charles the Simple is confined in 

the castle of Peronne. 
929 Charles the Simple dies in prison. 
936 Louis IV. sumamed d'Outremer, 

son of Charles the Simple, anointed 

king of Prance. 

Capetian Dynasty. 
987 Louis v., king of France, dies. Hugh 

Capet is anointed at Rheims. 
994 Charles, duke of Lorraine, the only 
survivor of the race of Charle- 
magne, dies in prison at Orleans. 
996 Hugh Capet d. Robert succeeds to 
the crown. 
1031 Henry I. king of France. 
1066 Conquest of England by William, 
duke of Normandy, in the battle 
of Senlac. 

1095 Council held at Clermont ; preach- 

ing of the crusade. 

1096 The crusades begin. 

1097 Godfrey of Bouillon and the cru- 

saders take Nice. 

1098 Battle of Dorylceum. 

1099 Jerusalem taken by the crusaders. 

1100 Godfrey of Bouillon d. 
1108 Philip I. d. 

1112 Robert Wace h. 

1113 War begins between England and 

France. 
1115 Peter the Hermit d. 
1119 Louis VI., king of France, defeated 

at Brenneville- Baldwin, II., king 

of Jerusalem, defeats the Turks 

at Antioch. 
1124 War between France and Germany. 
1137 Louis VII. king of France. 
1143 Vitry besieged and burnt by 

Louis VII. 
1147 Second crusade preached by Bernard 

of Clairvaux. Giraud le Roux, 

troubadour, Ji. 



A.D. 

1148 



1149 
1150 

1152 
1179 



1180 
1187 
1188 

1190 

1191 

1196 
1201 

1203 



1210 



1213 



1214 

1215 
1216 



1218 
1222 
1223 
1226 

1234 

1242 



The crusaders besiege Damascus 
without, success. The emperor 
Conrad and king Louis VII ■ arrive 
at Jerusalem. 

Louis VII. returns to France. 

Villehardouin b Arnauld Daniel, 
i/rouoadour fi. The cours d' amour. 

Suger d. 

Louis VII., king of France, arrives 
in England, on a pilgrimage to 
the shrine of Becket. 

Philip Augustus king of France. 
Robert Wace d. 

Jerusalem taken by Saladin (2nd of 
October). 

A third crusade undertaken for the 
recovery of Jerusalem. The tax 
called Saladin's tithe imposed in 
most countries of Christendom. 

Richard Coeur de Lion, king of 
England, and Philip Augustus go 
to the holy wars. The walls and 
gates of Paris are built. 

St. Jean d'Acre taken by the crusa- 
ders. Philip Augustus returns to 
France. — Chrestien de Troyes d. 

Philip Augustus marries Agnes of 
Merania. 

A war begins between John, king 
of England, and Philip Augustus 
of France. Tbibaut de Cham- 
pagne b. Agnes of Merania d. 

John, king of England, accused of 
the murder of his nephew Arthur, 
is cited to appear before an 
assembly of the peers of France ; 
his estates in that country are 
confiscated. The French and 
Venetian crusaders take Constan- 
tinople on the 10th of July. 

Crusade against the Albigenses. 
Chronicle of the crusade composed 
in the Langue d'oc. 

Villehardouin, d. Jaufre and Bru- 
iiissende, a Provencal romance, 
fiompo>ed about that time. 

Philip Augustus defeats the emperor 
Otho, near Bouvines. 

Louis IX., king of France, i. 

Philip Augustus invades England, 
and is received by the bai-ons ; 
but on the death of John, Henry 
III. is crowned king. 

Simon de Montfort d. 

Joinville b. 

Louis VIII. king of France. 

Louis IX. king of France. Regency 
of Blanche of Castile. 

Louis IX. marries Marguerite of 
Provence. 

Battle of Taillebourg. 



Xll 



History of France. 



A.D. 

1248 Louis IX. sets out for tlie crusade. 

1249 Damietta, in Egypt, taken by Louis 

on the 5th of June. 

1250 Battle of Mansourah. Louis de- 

feated aud taken prisoner in 
Egypt. Marcabrus, troubadour, fl. 

1252 Blanche of Castile d. 

1254 St Louis leaves Palestine 

1258 Stephen Boileau provost of Paris. 

1264 Ilenry, king of England, taken 
prisoner by the barons at the 
battle of Levies. St. Louis arbi- 
trates between them. 

1270 Louis dies at Tunis, his son Philip 
the Bold succeeds him. 

1278 Peter de la Brosse hanged at 
Paris. 

1282 The Sicilians, excited by Peter IIL, 
king of Arragon, massacre all 
the French they can find in their 
Island. 

1285 Philip IV. king of France. 

1296 Bull " Clericis Laicos." 

1297 Flanders invaded by the French. 

1301 Eevolt at Bruges. Bull "Ausculta 

fili." 

1302 Battle of Courtrai. States-General 

convoked. 

1303 Pope BouifaceVIIL arrested. He 

dies. 

1304 Battle of Mons-en-Puelle. Pope 

Benedict XI. d. 
1308 The States- General assembled at 
Tours approve the measures 
directed against the Templars. 

1314 Molay, grand master of the order of 

Templars, and a great number of 
knights companions, burned alive 
at Paris, on the 11th of March. 
Death of Pope Clement V-, and of 
Philip the Handsome. States- 
General (August). 

1315 Louis X. emancipates the serfs on 

the royal dominions. Enguerrand 
de Marigny d. 
1319 Joinville d. 

Branch of the Valois. 

1328 Philip VI., king of France, gains the 
battle of Cassel. 

1336 Edward III. of England supports 

the cause of the Flemings against 
Philip VI. of France. 

1337 Froissart h 

1340 Edward III defeats the French in a 

naval engagement near Sluys : 
truce of four years. 

1341 Beginning of the war for the 

succession of Brittany, between 
Charles of Blois and John of 



Montfort. Petrarch crowned at the 
C'jpitol. 
1344 Edward III. renews the war with 
France. 

1346 Battle of Cressy. 

1347 Calais surrenders to Edward III., 

after a siege of eleven months and 
a few days. William of Ock- 
ham d. 

1348 The black plague. The Jews per- 

secuted. 

1349 Cession of Vienness and of Mont- 

pellier to France. 

1350 Philip VI. d 

1356 John II., king of Prance, taken 
prisoner in the battle of Poictiers, 
September 19th, and sent to 
England. 

1358 Treaty of Calais, between Edward 
III. of England and the French. 
Stephen Marcel. The Jacque- 
rie. 

1360 King John, set at liberty, returns to 
France. Treaty of Bretigny. 
Buridan d. 

1364 Battle of Cocherel (6th of May), 
and of Auray (29th of Sept.) 
John II. dies in England, his son 
Charles V. succeeds him, and is 
crowned at Rheims- A Univer- 
sity founded at Angers. 

1367 Battle of Navarette. — De Guesclin 
made a prisoner. 

1376 Edward, prince of Wales, surnamed 

the Black Prince, d- (June 8th). 

1377 Edward III., king of England, d. 

Brittany invaded by Oliver de 

Clisson. 
1380 Du Guesclin d. Charles V. d. 
1382 Battle of Rosebecque. The Mai- 

leteers. Nicolas Oresme d. 
1392 Murder of Oliver do Clisson. 
1400 Chaucer d. 

1407 The duke of Orleans murdered. 

1408 Valentine of Milan d. The king of 

France excommunicated by the 

Pope. 
1410 Beginning of the civil war in 

Frante. 
1415 Battle of Agincourt (October 23). 

1418 Massacre of the Armagnac faction 

in Paris. 

1419 The Duke of Burgundy murdered at 

Montereau. 

1420 Treaty of Troyes signed on the 21st 

of May. A Parliament estab- 
lished at Toulouse (March 20). 

1421 Battle of Beauge on the 3rd of 

Apiil, in which the duke of 
Clarence is killed. 

1422 Henry V., king of England, d. at 



ChronoloQical Table. 



Xlll 



A.D. 

Vincennes in France. Charles VI., 

king of France, d. 
1423 Battle of Crevant (June). 
1428 The duke of Bedford defeats the 

French at Verneuil (August 16). 

1428 The siege of Orleans begins on the 

12th of October. 

1429 Battle of Herrings (12th February). 

Joan of Arc obliges the English 
to raise the siege of Orleans. 
1431 Trial and death of Joan of Arc. 

1435 Treaty of Arras. 

1436 Paris recovered by the French, on 

the 13th of April. 

1437 Siege of Moutereau. Charles VII. 

makes his solemn entry in Paris. 
1440 The " Praguery " 
1444 Truce between England and France 

signed at Tours. 

1449 War renewed between England and 

France. 

1450 Battle of Formigny gained over the 

Eng'ish. Agnes Sorel db. 

1451 The English evacuate Rouen and 

several places in Prance. Cam- 
paign in Guyenne. 

1453 Talbot A. 

1456 Jacques Coeur (J. 

1461 Louis XI. king of France. 

1464 The league against Louis XL of 

France, called " La Guerre du 
Bien Public." 

1465 Treaties of Conflans and of Saint- 

Maur. 

1467 Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, (i, 

1468 Louis XI. at Peronne. Revolt of the 

Liegese. 

1476 Charles, duke of Burgundy, defeated 

at Granson (20th of June). 

1477 The duke of Burgundy slain at 

Nancy. 
1479 Battle of Guinegate. 

1483 Louis XL d. Rabelais b. Luther h. 

Charles VIII. king of France. 

1484 The States-Gem ral convoked at 

Tour.s. 
1488 Battle of St. Aubin : the duke of 

Brittany is defeated and the duke 

of Orleans taken prisoner (28th of 

June). 
1492 Brittany united to the French crown. 

1494 Charles VIII., king of France, goes on 

an expedition into Italy. 

1495 Battle of Fornovo between Charles 

VIII. and the Venetians (6th July) . 
Clement Marot h. 

Branch of Orleans. 

1498 Death of Charles VIIL, king of 

Prance (April 7th). 

1499 Louis XII., king of Prance, takes 



possession of Milaness, and enters 
Milan on the 6th of October. 

1500 Insurrection at Milan. 

1501 Louis XII. of France and Fer- 

dinand V. of Spain seize on the 
kingdom of Naples. 

1503 The power of the French in Naples 

ends with the loss of the battles of 
Cerignola, Seminara, and Gari- 
gliano. Pope Alexander VI. d. 
Michel de I'Hospital h. 

1504 Truce between France and Spain. 

1508 The pope and the emperor join the 

king of France in the treaty of 
Cambray, against the Venetians. 

1509 Battle of Agnadello, (14th of May). 

Calvin h. Jfitienne Dolet b. Mar- 
tial d'Auvergne d 
1510- Cardinal d'Amboise d. 

1512 Battle of Ravenna. Gaston de Foix d. 

1513 The French "^defeated by the Swiss 

in the battle of Novarra. Jacques 
Amyot b. Pope Julius II. d. 

1514 Anne of Brittany d. 

Branch of Angouleme. 

1515 Battle of Melegnauo between the 

French and Swiss. Louis XII d. 
Ramus b. 

1516 Treaty of Noyons signed on the 16th 

of August. 

1520 Interview between Henry VIIL of 

England and Francis I. of France 
(4th of June). Pierre Viret b. 

1521 League between the emperor Charles 

V. of Spain and Henry VIIL of 
England, against the king of 
France. 
1523 League against Francis I. of France, 
by Pope Clement VII., the em- 
peror, and the Venetians, Ba- 
yard d. The memoirs of Commines 
published. 

1525 Fiancis I. taken prisoner in the 

battle of Pavia (24th of February), 
and sent to Madrid. 

1526 Treaty of Madrid (I4th of Januaiy). 

Francis is restored to liberty. The 
Holy League. . 

1527 Henri Estienne b. Brantdme h. 
1529 Peace of Cambray, between Charles 

V. and Fi-ancis I. Louis de Ber- 
quin put to death, fitienne Pas- 
quier b. 

1536 League between Francis I. of France, 
and Solyman II., sultan of the 
Turks, against the emperor Charles 
V. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye b. 

1513 Treaty of alliance between Sultan 
Solyman and Francis I. of France 
against the emperor Charles V. 



XIV 



History of France. 



A.n. 
1544- Battle of Cerisoles. Treaty of Crespy 

(18th of September). Bonaven- 

ture des Periers (Z. Clement 

Marot du. Du Bartas b. 
1515 Massacre of the Vaudois. Robert 

Garnier b. 

1547 Henry II. king of France. 

1548 Rebellion in the South of France. 

La Boetie writes his Conire un. 
First edition of the Salic law. 

1556 Charles V. resigns the crown of 

Spain and all his other dominions 
and retires to the monastery of 
St. Just. Malherbe h. 

1557 Battle of St. Quentin (10th of 

Auo'ust). 

1558 The French recover Calais from the 

English. Mellin de St. Gelais d. 

1559 Henry II. d. Peace of Cateau- 

Cambresis. Edict of ficouen. Am- 
yot translates Plutarch. Anne 
Dubonrg put to death. 

1560 Conspiracy of Aniboise. Francis 

II. d. Charles IX., king. Joa- 
chim du Bellay d. 

1562 Massacre of Vassy. Battle of Dreux 

(19th December). 

1563 The duke of Guise is assassinated by 

Pol trot (24th February). Peace 
of Amboise. 

1567 The religious wars recommence in 
France ; battle of St Denis, be- 
tween the prince of Conde and the 
constable Montmorency, in which 
the latter is mortally wounded. 

1569 The Huguenots defeated in the 
battles of Jarnac, on the 13th- 
May, and of Moncontour, on the 
3rd October. 

1572 Massacre of the Huguenots at Paris, 
on Sunday, the 24th August. 
Ramus d. Jean Goujon d 

1574 Charles IX. d. Hotman publishes 
his Franco- Gallia. 

1576 Edict of pacification in France. 

1584 The Cardinal de Bourbon proposed 
as eventual king of France. La 
Croix du Maine publishes his 
Biblietlieqiie Franfaise. 

1587 Battle of Coutras (10th of October) 

the Duke de Joyeuse is defeated 
by Henry, king of Navarre. .An 
Arabic lectureship is created at 
the college royal. 

1588 The duke of Guise and his brother 

the cardinal murdered at Blois. 

Dynasty of the Bourbons. 

1589 Henrv III. of France murdered 

(22ud of July). Henry IV. of 



Navarre succeeds to tlie vacant 
throne. Battle of Arques. Ron- 
sard, Hotman d. 

1590 Battle of Ivry (4th of March). 

Germain Pilon, Jean Cousin, Du 
Bartas, Cujas, Ambrose Pare, 
Palissy d. Theophile de Viaud h. 

1591 The Pope excommunicates Henry 

IV. : the parliament of Paris 
oppose the sentence. Guy Co- 
quitte'sLiheit^s del' eglisede France 
published. La Noue d. 

1593 Henry IV. abjures the Protestant 

religion, on Sunday, the 25th of 
of July, at St. Denis. The Satire 
MSnipp^e published. Amyot d. 

1594 Henry IV. anointed at Chartres : 

attempt on his life (17th Decem- 
ber). Pierre Pithou^. Balzac, St. 
Amand b. 

1595 Battle of Fontaine-Fran^aise. Des- 

marets de St. Sorlin b. 

1598 Edict of Nantes (April). Peace of 
Vervins signed on the 22nd of the 
same month. Voiture b. 

1602 Marshal Biron's conspiracy detected 
and punished. 

1610 Henry IV. assassinated by Ravaillao 
(4th of May). Louis XIII. king 
of France. Scarron, La Calpre- 
n^de h. 

1617 Murder of Concini. 

1621 The civil war renewed with the 
Huguenots in France, and con- 
tinues nine years. The Benedic- 
tines of the congregation of St. 
Maur receive theii- statutes. La 
Fontaine b. 

1628 Rochelle besieged and taken by 

Louis XIII. (18th of October). 

1629 Peace restored between France and 

England. Malherbe d. Corneille 
brings out Melite, his first play. 

1630 Treaty of Cherasco. " Journee des 

Dupes." Hardy, Agrippa d'Au- 
bigne d. 

1632 Battles of Lutzen and of Castel- 
naudary. Flechier, Bourdaloue b. 

1636 Treaty between Louis XIII. of 
France, and Christina, queen of 
Sweden (10th of March). Port 
Royal des Cbamps founded. Le 
Cid brought out. Boileau b. 

1642 Conspiracy of Cinq-Mars. Riche- 

lieu d. 

1643 Louis XIII. d (4th of May). The 

duked'Enghien, afterwards prince 
of Conde, defeats the Spaniards at 
Rocroy (9th of \ ay). St. Cyrand. 
1648 The prince of Conde defeats the 
archduke at Sens (10th of August). 



Chron ological Table, 



XV 



Treaty of Munster (14th of October) 
between France, Sweden and the 
empire. The civil war of the 
Fronde breaks out in Paris. Mer- 
senne, Voiture A. La Sueur 
finishes his series of paintings 
illustrating the history of St. 
Bruno. 

1659 Peace restored between France and 
Spain, by the treaty called the 
"Peace of the Pyrenees." Louis 
XIV. marries the Infanta of Spain. 
Moliere and the Precieuses ridi- 
cules. 

1661 Cardinal Mazarin d. Bossuet's first 
sermon before Louis XIV. 

1667 War renewed between France and 

Spain. Moliere and Tartuffe. 
Bacine and Andromaque. 

1668 A triple alliance between Great 

Britain, Sweden, and the States- 
General, against France (23rd of 
January). Peace of Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, between France and Spain 
(22nd of April). Racine and Les 
PlaideurSjMoliereandL'Avare. Le 
Sage b. 

1672 WardeclaredbyEnglandand France, 

against the Dutch. A treaty be- 
tween the empire and Holland, 
against France (15th of July). 
Boileau and Le Lutrin- Moliere 
and Les Femmes savantes. 

1673 The English and French defeat the 

Dutch (28th of May) at Schon- 
velt ; again (4th of June), and 
(11th of August), in the mouth of 
the Texel. Louis XIV. declares 
waragainst Spain (9th of October) . 
Racine and Mithridate. 

1674 Battle of SenefiFe, in Flanders, be- 

tween the prince of Orange and 
the prince of Conde (1st of August). 
First settlement of the French at 
Pondicherry. Mar.ghal Turenne 
defeats the Imperialists Chape- 
lain d. Racine and Iphigenie. 
Malebranche and the Recherche 
de la VeritS. 

1675 Conference for a peace held at 

Nimeguen. Madame de la Valliere 

takes the veil. 
1678 Peace of Ninieguen i31st of July). 

La Fontaine publishes his second 

series of fables. Ducange's Latin 

Glossary. 
1681 The city of Sfcrasbnrg submits to 

Louis XIV. Mabillon publishes 

his -De re diplomatic'i. 
1684 liiixemburg taken bv Louis XIV. 

A truce between France and 



Spain concluded atRatisbon (31st 
of July) and between France and 
the empire (5th of August). P. 
Comeille d. 

1685 Louis XIV. revokes the edict of 

Nantes. 

1686 Treaty of alliance between Germany, 

Great Britain, and Holland against 
Prance. Conde d. 

1689 The French fleet defeated by the 

En-glish and Dutch in Bantry Bay 
(1st of May) . Racine and Esther. 

1690 Battle of Fleurus ; Luxemburg de- 

feats the allies (21st of June). 
The allied English and Dutch fleets 
defeated by the French off Beacby 
Head (80th of June). 

1691 A congress at the Hague, in Jan. 

Mons taken by the French (SOtli 
of March). Louvois d. Racine 
aud Athalie. 

1692 Battle of La Hogue : the English 

defeat the French fleet (19th of 
May). Namur, in Flanders, be- 
sieged and taken by Louis XIV. 
(25th of May). Luxemburg de- 
feats the allies at Steinkirk (24th 
of July). 

1693 The English and Dutch fleets de- 

feated by the French off Cape St. 
Vincent (16th of June) . The duke 
of Savoy defeated by Marshal 
Catinat, at Marsaglia (24th of 
September). Pelisson, Bussy. 
Rabutin, Mdme. de La Fayette, 
Mdlle. de Montpensier d. 

1697 Peace of Ryswick (11th of Septem- 

ber) between Great Britain and 
France — Prance and Holland — 
France and Spain ,• and on the 
20th of October, between France 
and the empire. Santeuil d. The 
Abbe Prevost b. 

1698 The first treaty of partition between 

Great Britain, France and Hol- 
land signed (19th of August) for 
the dismemberment of Spain, to 
Charles II., king of that couiitry, 
makes his will in favour of a prince 
of the house of Bourbon. Le 
Nain de Tillemont d. 

1700 Charles IL, king of Spain, d. (21st 
of October). The dukeof Anjou, 
grandson of Louis XIV., succeeds 
by the name of Philip V. 

1702 Battle of Luzzara, in Italy (4th of 
August) ; the Imperialists de- 
feated by the French ; the French 
fleet destroyed in the por-r, of Vigo, 
by the British and Dutch (12th of 
October) . Jean Bart d. 



XVI 



History of France. 



1704 Battto of Hochstedt or Blenheim 

(2nd of August). Bossuet, Bour- 

daloue d. 
1706 Battle of Ramilies (12th of May) 

the French are defeated by the 

duke of Marlborough. 

1708 Battle of Audenarde (30th of June), 

the French defeated by the duke 
of Marlborough and Prince Eu- 
gene. Eegnard and Le Legataire 
universel, Le Sage and Turcaret. 

1709 Battle of Malplaquet (31st of Aug.), 

the French defeated by the allies. 
Mons taken by the allies (21st of 
October). Port Royal des Champs 
destroyed. 

1710 Battle of Villa Viciosa (29th of No- 

vember), the Imperialists, under 
Count Stahremburg, are defeated 
by Philip V 

1712 Negotiations for a general peace 

opened at Utrecht. Jean Jacques 
Rousseau h. 

1713 Peace of Utrecht, concluded by 

France and Spain, with. England, 
Savoy, Portugal, Prussia, and 
Holland, signed on the 30th of 
March O.S. Fenelon publishes 
his Traite de V existence deBieu. 

1714 The bull " Unigenitus" received in 

France. 

1715 Louis XIV. d. (21st of August), suc- 

ceeded by his great-grandson, 
Louis XV. under the regency of 
the duke of Orleans. Malebranche, 
Fenelon d. I/O Sage's Gil Bias. 

1717 Triple alliance between Great Bri- 

tain, France, and Holland, signed 
at the Hague (24th of December) . 
The memoirs of Cardinal de Retz 
published. Massillon's Petit Ca- 
reme preached. 

1718 Quadruple alliance between Ger- 

many, Great Britain, France, and 
Holland, for the maintenance 
of the treaties of Utrecht and 
Baden. Conspiracy of Cellamare. 
Great Britain declares war against 
Spain (11th of December) Vol- 
taire and fficfij^e, his first tragedy. 

1719 The Mississippi scheme at its height 

in France. Madame de Main- 
tenon d. 

1720 The French Mississippi company dis- 

solved. The plague breaks out at 
Marseilles, and causes great dis- 
tress. 

1723 Duke of Orleans d. Voltaire pub- 
lishes his Pueme de la Ligne (La 
Honriade). 

1725 Trea' of Hanover, between Great 



Britain, France, and 

against Germany and Spain (3rd 

September). 

1733 Stanislaus proclaimed king of Po- 
land (5th of OotoberU 

1731 The Imperialists defeated by the 
French and Piedmontese at Parma 
(18th of June), and in the battle 
of Guastalla, by the king of Sar- 
dinia, and the Marshals Coigny 
and Broglie (8th of September). 
Montesquieu's Grandev/r et De- 
cadence des Romains- 

1735 Treaty of Vienna (3rd of October). 
Voltaire publishes his Lettres philo- 
sophiques. 

1740 The Emperor Charles VI. d. (9th of 

October). Voltaire publishes hia 
Essai sur les mwurs. 

1741 The archduchess Maria Theresa 

crowned queen of Hungary, at 
Presburg (25th of June). 
1743 Battle of Dettingen (16th of June). 
Cardinal de Pleury d. Voltaire 
and Merope. 

1745 Battle' of Fontenoy, the French de- 

feat the allies, commanded by the 
duke of Cumberland. 

1746 (April 16th) Battle of Culloden. 

„ (September 30th) Count Saxe de- 
feats the allies at Raucoux. Vau- 
venargues and the Introduction a 
la connaissance d,e V esprit liumain. 

1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, between 
Great Britain, France, Spain, 
Austria, Sardinia, and Holland 
(7th of October) . Montesquieu's 
Esprit des lois. 

1754 (April 17) the French attack an Eng- 
lish fort on Monongahela, and 
Logstown on the Ohio. General 
Brad dock defeated and killed by 
the French (July 9), near FortDu 
Queane, on the Ohio. 

1756 May 29, Admiral Byng defeated by 

the French. The duke of Riche- 
lieu takes Port Mahon (June 28). 

1757 Damien attempts to assassinate 

Louis XV. The French garrison 
of Chandernugger surrenders to 
the British (March 23). Battle 
of Hastenbeck, the French defeat 
the duke of Cumberland (July 26). 
The marquis of Montcalm besieges 
Fort George (Augusts), the Eng- 
lish surrender on the 9th. Con- 
vention of Closter-Seven, between 
Marshal Richelieu and the duke 
of Ctimberland (September 8). 
Battle of Rosbach (November 5). 

1758 March 14th, The Preucli gartisoii ho 



Chronological Table. 



xvu 



Minden capittilates. The French 
defeated at Crevelt (June 23). 
Helvetius pablishes He I'Esprit. 
Quesnay's Tableau dconomiqiie. 

1759 (September 30.) The British defeated 

by the French in the East Indies, 
near Arcot. Rousseau's Nouvelle 
Helo'ise. 

1760 (April 28th ) The English defeated by 

the French near Quebec. Mdme. 
de Souza h. 

1761 (August 15th.) The family compact 

concluded between Louis XV. of 
Prance and Charles III. of Spain. 
Voltaire's L'Ingenu. 

1762 (August 6.) The Jesuits suppressed 

in France. Treaty of peace signed 
at Pontainebleau, between France, 
Spain and Great Britain. Rous- 
seau's Emile. 

1763 (February 10.) Peace of Paris, be- 

tween Great Britain, Prance and 
Spain, acceded to by Portugal. 
I'abbe Pre vest d. 
1767 (May 15.) Corsica ceded to France, 
by the Genoese. Benjamin Con- 
stant, Fievee, b. 



4.D. 

1769 Napoleon Bonaparte, Cuvier, Cha- 
teaubriand, b. 

1774 (May 10) Louis XV. of France d. 
Succeeded by Louis XVI. 

1778 (February 6.) Treaty of alliance and 
defence between Finance and the 
Americans. Pondichery taken by 
the British. JB,ousseau, Voltaire, 
d. Buffon's Epoqites de la^ nature. 

1782 (April 12th ) Sir George Rodney de- 

feats the French fleet under Count 
de Grasse, off Dominica Another 
engagement near Trincomalee, on 
the same day ; and a third in Sep- 
tember. 

1783 (January 20.) Preliminaries of peace 

between Great Britain, Prance and 
Spain, by vhich the independence 
of America is confirmed. 

1788 (November 6.) The French notables, 

convoked by Louis XVI., assemble 
at Paris. Buffon d. Bernardin 
de St. Pierre's Paul et Virginie. 

1789 (May 4.) The States General of 

Prance assemble. The Bastille 
at Paris destroyed (July 14). 
Cbenier's Charles IX. performed. 




CHAPTER I. 



THE GAULS AND THE ROMANS. 

Three or four centuries before the Christian era, on that vast Gaul :_ its 
territory comprised between the ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediter- ^^^^g^ " 
ranean, the Alps, and the Ehine, lived six or seven millions of 
men a bestial life, enclosed in dwellings dark and low, the best of 
them built of wood and clay, covered with branches or straw, made 
in a single round piece, open to daylight by the door alone, and 
confusedly heaped together behind a rampart, not inartistically 
composed, of timber, earth, and stone, which surrounded and pro- 
tected what they were pleased to call a town. 

Of even such towns there were scarcely any as yet, save in the 
most populous and least uncultivated portion of Gaid ; that is to 
say, in the southern and eastern regions, at the foot of the moun- 
tains of Auvergne and the Cevennes, and along the coasts of the 
Mediterranean. In the north and the west were paltry hamlets, 
as transferable almost as the people themselves ; and on some islet 
amidst the morasses, or in some hidden recess of the forest, were 
huge entrenchments formed of the trees that were felled, where the 
population, at the first sound of the war-cry, ran to shelter them- 
selves, with their flocks and all their movables. Gaul was not 
occupied by one and the same nation, with the same traditions and 
the same chiefs. Tribes, very different in origin, habits and date 
of settlement, were continually disputing the territory. In the 
soath were Iberians or Aquitanians, Phoenicians and Greeks ; in the 
north and north-west Kymrians or Belgians ; every where elae 



2 History of France. 

Gauls or Celts, tlie most numerous settlers, vrho had the honour of 
giving their name to the country. Who were the first to come, 
then? and what was the date of the first settlement? !Nohody 
knows. Of the Greeks alone does history mark with any precision 
the arrival in southern Gaul. The Phoenicians preceded them by 
several centuries ; but it is impossible to fix any exact time. The 
information is equally vague about the period when the Kymrians 
invaded the north of Gaul. As for the Gauls and the Iberians, 
there is not a word about their first entrance into the country, for 
they are discovered there already at the first appearance of the 
country itself in the domain of history. 

Iberians. The Iberians, whom Eoman writers call Aquitanians, dwelt at 
the foot of the Pyrenees, in the territory comprised between the 
mountains, the Garonne, and the ocean. They belonged to the 
race which, under the same appellation, had peopled Spain, and 
which abides still in the department of the Lower Pyrenees, under 
the name of Basques ; a peoplet^ distinct from all its neighbours 
in features, costume, and especially language, which resembles none 
of the present languages of Europe, contains many words which 
are to be found in the names of rivers, mountains, and towns of 
olden Spain, and which presents a considerable analogy to the 
idioms, ancient and modern, of certain peoples of northern Africa. 
The Phoenicians did not leave, as the Iberians did, in the south of 
France distinct and well- authenticated descendants. 

Greeks. As merchants and colonists, the Greeks were, in Gaul, the suc- 

cessors of the Phoenicians, and Marseilles was one of their first and 

Marseilles iiiost considerable colonies ; she extended her walls all round the 

its colonies bay and her enterprises far away. She founded, on the southern 
coast of Gaul and on the eastern coast of Spain, permanent settle- 
ments, which are to this day towns : eastward of the Rhone, Her- 
cules' harbour, Moncecus (Monaco), Niccea (Nice), Antijpolis (An- 
tibes) ; westward, Heraclea Cacaharia ( Saint- Gilles), Agatha (Agde) 
EmporioB (Ampurias in Catalonia), &c., &c. In the valley of the 
Ehone, several towns of the Gauls, Cabellio (Cavaillon), Avenio 
(Avignon), Arelate (Aries), for instance, were like Greek colonies, 
so great there was the number of travellers or established merchants 
■who spoke Greek. With this commercial activity Marseilles united 
intellectual and scientific activity ; her grammarians were among 
the first to revise and annotate the poems of Homer ; and bold 
travellers from Marseilles, Euthymenes and Pytheas by name, 
cruised, one along the western coast of Africa beyond the straits of 



* I*r. " peuplade," from ^eqpZe, on tlie analogy of circlet from circle. — Tkans. 



The Gauls and the Romans. 3 

Gibraltar, and the other the southern and western coasts of Europe, 
from the mouth of the Tanais (Don), in the Black Sea, to the lati- 
tudes and perhaps into the interior of the Baltic. They lived, 
both of them, in the second half of the fourth century B.C., and 
they wrote each a Periplus, or tales of their travels, which have 
unfortunately been almost entirely lost. 

Beyond a strip of land of uneven breadth, along the Mediter- 
ranean, and save the space peopled towards the south- Avest by the 
Iberians, the country, which received its name from the former of 
the two, was occupied by the Gauls and the Kymrians ; by the 
Gauls in the centre, south-east, and east, in the highlands of modern 
France, between the Alps, the Vosges, the mountains of Auvergue 
and the Cevennes ; by the Kymrians in the north, north-west, and 
west, in the lowlands, from the western boundary of the Gauls to 
the ocean. 

Whether the Gauls and the Kymrians were originally of the Zymrians. 
same race, or at least of races closely connected ; whether they 
were both anciently comprised under the general name of Celts ; 
and whether the Kymrians, if they were not of the same race as 
the Gauls, belonged to that of the Germans, the final conquerors of 
the Roman empire, are questions which the learned have been 
a long, long while discussing without deciding. Each of these 
races, far from forming a single people bound to the same destiny 
and under the same chieftains, split into peoplets, more or less 
independent, who foregathered or separated according to the shifts 
of circumstances, and who pursued each on their own account and 
at their own pleasure, their fortunes or their fancies. Three grand 
leagues existed amongst the Ga\;ls ; that of the Arvernians, formed 
of peoplets established in the country which received from them 
the name of Auvergne ; that of the ^duans, in Burgundy, whose 
centre was Bihrade (Autun); and that of the Sequanians, in 
Eranche-Comte, whose centre was Vesontio (Besan^on). Amongst 
the Kymrians of the West, the Armoric league bound together the 
tribes of Brittany and lower Normandy. These alliances, intended 
to group together scattered forces, led to fresh passions or interests, 
which became so many fresh causes of discord and hostility. 

From the earliest times to the first century before the Christian Migra- 
era, Gaul appears a prey to an incessant and disorderly movement tionsofthe 
of the population ; they change settlement and neighbourhood ; 
disappear from one point and reappear at another ; cross one 
another ; avoid one another ; absorb and are absorbed. And the 
movement was not confined within Gaul ; the Gauls of every race 
went, sometimes in very numerous hordes, to seek far away plunder 

B 2 



4 History of France. 

and a settlement. Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, Asia Minor and 
Africa have been in turn the theatre of those Gallic expeditions 
which entailed long wars, grand displacements of peoples, and some- 
times the formation of new nations. Let us make a slight acquaint- 
ance with this outer history of the Gauls ; for it is well worth 
while to follow them a space upon their distant wanderings. We 
will then return to the soil of France and concern ourselves solely 
with what has passed within her boundaries. 

It is only with the sixth century before our era that we light 

upon the really historical expeditions of the Gauls away from 

Gaul, those, in fact, of which we may follow the course and 

estimate the effects. 

B.C. 587. Towards the year 587 B.C., aMiost at the very moment when 

The Gauls j^j-^g Phoceans had iust founded Marseilles, two great Gallic hordes 
in Ger- . ' & 

many and got ill motion at the same time and crossed, one the lihine, the 
in Italy, other the Alps, making one for Germany, the other for Italy. 
The former followed the course of the Danube and settled in 
Illyria, on the right bank of the river. It is too much, perhaps, to 
say that they settled ; the greater part of them continued wan- 
dering and fighting, sometimes amalgamating with the peoplets 
they encountered, sometimes chasing them and exterminating them, 
whilst themselves were incessantly pushed forward by fresh bands 
coming also from Gaul. Thus marching and spreading, leaving 
here and there on their route, along the rivers, and in the valleys 
of the Alps, tribes that remained and founded peoples, the Gauls 
B.C. 340. had reached, towards the year 340 B.C., the confines of Macedonia ; 

The Gauls additional hordes, in great numbers, arrived amongst them about 
In Greece* ' . ^ ' ^ 

the year 281 B.C. They had before them Thrace, Macedonia, 

Thessaly, Greece, rich, but distracted and weakened by civil strife. 
They effected an entrance at several points, devastating, plundering, 
loading their cars with booty, and dividing their prisoners into two 
parts ; one offered in sacrifice to their gods, the other strung up to 
trees and abandoned to the gais and matars, or javehns and pikes 
of the conquerors. 
B.C. 279, Three years later, another and a more formidable invasion came 
near D 1- ^^^^^i^o upon Thessaly and Greece. It was, according to the 
phi. unquestionably exaggerated account of the ancient historians, 

200,000 strong, and commanded by a famous, ferocious, and 
insolent chieftain (Brenn), whom the Latins and Greeks call 
Brennus. His idea was to strike a blow which should simul- 
taneously enrich the Gauls and stun the Greeks. He meant to 
plur.der the temple at Delphi, the most venerated place in all 
Greece, whither flowed from century to century aU kinds of 



The Gauls and the Romans, 5 

oflFerings, and where, no doubt, enormous treasure was deposited ; 
thoroughly defeated, however, the barbarians traversed, flying and 
fighting, Thessaly and Macedonia \ and on returning whence they 
had set out, they dispersed, some to settle at the foot of a neigh- 
bouring mountain, under the command of a chieftain named Ba~ 
tlianet or Baedhannat, i, e. son of the wild hoar; others to 
march back towards their own country j the greatest part to 
resume the same life of incursion and adventure. But they 
changed the scene of operations ; they crossed the Hellespont 
and passed into Asia Minor ; there, at one time in the pay of the 
kings of Bithynia, Pergamos, Cappadocia, and Syria, or of the 
free commercial cities which were struggling against the kings, at 
another carrying on wars on their own account, they wandered for 
more than thirty years, divided into three great hordes, which 
parcelled out the territories among themselves, overran and plun- 
dered them during the fine weather, entrenched themselves during 
winter in their camp of cars, or in some fortified place, sold their 
services to the highest bidder, changed masters according to 
interest or inclination, and by their bravery became the terror 
of these efi'eminate populations, and the arbiters of theiie petty 
states. 

At last both princes and people grew weary. Antiochus, King 
of Syria, attacked one of the three bands which formed the 
barbarian multitude — that of the Tectosagians, conquered it, and 
cantoned it in a district of Upper Phrygia. Later still, about 
241 B.C., Eumenes, sovereign of Pergamos, and Attalus, his 
successor, drove and shut iip the other two bands, the Tolistoboians 
and Trocmians, likewise in the same region. The victories of B.C. 241. 
Attalus over the Gauls excited veritable enthusiasm. He was ^ ^^Ttta. 
celebrated as a special envoy from Zeus. He took the title of lus defeat 
King, which his predecessors had not hitherto borne. Attacked *^® Gauls, 
in their strongholds on Mount Olympus and Mount Magaba, 
189 B.C., the three Gallic bands, after a short but stout resistance, 
were at last conquered and subjugated ; and thenceforth losing all 
national importance, they amalgamated little by little with the 
Asiatic populations around them. 

Nevertheless the fusion of the Gauls of Galatia with the natives 
always remained very imperfect ; for towards the end of the 
fourth century of the Christian era they did not speak Greek, 
as the latter did, but their national tongue, that of the Kymro- 
Belgians ; and St. Jerome testifies that it differed very little 
from that which was spoken in Belgica itself, in the region of 
Treves. 



6 History of France. 

The details of the struggle between the Gauls and the Romans 

belong specially to Eoman history ; they have been transmitted 

to us only by Eoman historians; and the Eomans it was who 

were left ultimately in possession of the battle-field, that is, 

of Italy. 

B.C. 391 — Four distinct periods may be recognized in this history ; and 

StruRffies ^^^ marks a different phase in the course of events, and, so to 

oftheGauls speak, an act of the drama. During the first period, which lasted 

Willi the forty -two years, from 391 to 349 B.C., the Gauls carried on a war 

1st epoch, of aggression and conquest against Eome. 

To this epoch belonged those marvels of daring recorded in 
Eoman tradition, those acts of heroism tinged with fable, which 
are met with amongst so many peoples, either in their earliest age 
or in their days of great peril. In the year 361 B.C., Titus 
Manlius, and twelve years later, M. Valerius, a young military 
tribune, were the two Eoman heroes who vanquished in single 
combat the two Gallic giants who insolently defied Eome. The 
gratitude towards them was general and of long duration, for two 
centuries afterwards (in the year 167 B.C.) the head of the Gaul 
with his tongue out still appeared at Eome, above the shop of a 
money-changer, on a circular sign-board, called *' the Kymrian 
shield " {scutum Cimhricum). After seventeen years' stay in 
Latium, the Gauls at last withdrew, and returned to their adopted 
country in those lovely valleys of the Po which already bore the 
name of Cisalpine Gaul. They began to get disgusted with a 
wandering life. Their population multiplied ; their towns spread ; 
their fields were better cultivated ; their manners became less 
barbarous. For fifty years there was scarcely any trace of 
hostility or even contact between them and the Eomans. But at 
the beginning of the third century before our era, the coalition of 
the Samnites and Etruscans against Eome was near its climax ; 
they eagerly pressed the Gauls to join, and the latter assented 
easily. Then commenced the second period of struggles between 
the two peoples. 
2nd epoch. During this second period Eome was more than once in danger. 
J .^' - In the year 283 B.C. the Gauls destroyed one of her armies near 
Aretium. Aretium (Arezzo), and advanced to the Eoman frontier, saying, 
"We are bound for Eome; the Gauls know how to take it." 
Seventy-two years afterwards the Cisalpine Gauls swore they would 
not put off their baldricks till they had mounted the Capitol, and 
they arrived within three days' march of Eome. 

In spite of sometimes urgent peril, in spite of popular alarms, 
Eome, during the course of this period, from 299 to 258 B.C., 



The Gauls and the Romans. J 

maintained an increasing ascendency over the Gauls. She always 
cleared them off her territory, several times ravaged theirs, on the 
two hanks of the Po, called respectively Transpadan and Cispadan 
Gaul, and gained the majority of the great hattles she had to 
fight. Finally, in the year 283 B.C., the propraetor Drusus, after 
having ravaged the country of the Senonic Gauls, carried off the 
very ingots and jewels, it was said, which had been given to their 
ancestors as the price of their retreat. 

Towards the close of the third century hefore our era, the triumph Hannibal, 
of Eome in Cisalpine Gaul seemed nigh to accomplishment, when 
news arrived that the Komans' most formidable enemy, Hannibal, 
meditating a passage from Africa into Italy by Spain and Gaul, 
was already at work, by his emissaries, to ensure for his enterprise 
the concurrence of the Transalpine and Cisalpine Gauls. The 
Senate ordered the envoys they had just then at Carthage to 
traverse Gaul on returning, and seek out allies there against 
Hannibal. However, this scheme failed, and the delights of 
victory and of pillage brought into full play the Cisalpine Gaub' 
natural hatred of Rome. After Ticinus and Trebia, Hannibal had 
no more zealous and devoted troops. This was the third period of ^ q ^wmvI! 
the struggle between the Gauls and the Romans in Italy. Eome, 170. 
well advised by this terrible war of the danger with which she was 
ever menaced by the Cisalpine Gauls, formed the resolution of no 
longer restraining them, but of subduing them and conquering 
their territory. She spent thirty years (from 200 to 170 B.C.) in 
the execution of this design, proceeding by means of war, of found- 
ing Eoman colonies, and of sowing dissension among the Gallic 
peoplets. In vain did the two principal, the Boians and the 
Insubrians, endeavour to rouse and rally all the rest : some hesi- 
tated; some absolutely refused, and remained neutral. Day by 
day did Rome advance. At length, in the year 190 B.C., the 
wrecks of the 112 tribes which had formed the nation of the Boians, 
unable any longer to resist, and unwilling to submit, rose as one 
man, and departed from Italy. 

The Senate, with its usual wisdom, multiplied the number of ^°^*° 5*'* 
T^ 1 . . , , . 1-1 lonieB m 

Roman colonies m the conquerea territory, treated with moderation Gaul. 

the tribes that submitted, and gave to Cisalpine Gaul the name of 

the Oisalpine or Hither Gallic Province, which was afterwards 

changed for that of Gallia, Togata or Roman Gaul. Then, de- 

daring that nature herself had placed the Alps between Gaul and 

Italy as an insurmountable barrier, the Senate pronounced "acurso 

on whosoever should attempt to cross it." 

It was Rome herself that soon crossed that barrier of the Alps 



8 History of France. 

which she had pronounced fixed by nature and insurmountable. 
Scarcely was she mistress of Cisalpine Gaul when she entered upon 
a quarrel with the tribes which occupied the mountain-passes. It 
is likely that the Gallic mountaineers were not careful to abstain, 
thej'^ and their flocks, from descending upon the territory that had 
become Eoman. The Romans, in turn, penetrated into the ham- 
lets, carried off flocks and people, and sold them in the public 
markets at Cremona, at Placentia, and in all their colonies. 

Towards the middle of the second century B.C. Marseilles, then 
an ally of Rome, was at war with certain Gallic tribes, her neigh- 
bours, whose territory she coveted. Two of her colonies, Nice and 
Antibes, were threatened. She called on Rome for help. A 
Roman deputation went to decide the quarrel ; but the Gauls 
refused to obey its summons, and treated it with insolence. The 
deputation returned with an army, succeeded in beating the re- 
fractory tribes, and gave their land to the Massilians. The same 
thing occurred repeatedly with the same result. Within the 
space of thirty years nearly all the tribes between the Rhone and 
the Var, in the country which was afterwards Provence, were 
subdued and driven back amongst the mountains, with notice nut 
to approach within a mile of the coast in general, and a mile and 
a half of the places of disembarkation. But the Romans did not 
stop there. They did not mean to conquer for Marseilles alone. 
In the year 123 B.C., at some le;igues to the north of the Greek 
city, near a little river, then called the Ccenus and now-a-days 
the Arc, the consul C. Sextius Calvinus had noticed, during his 
campaign, an abundance of thermal springs, agreeably situated 
amidst wood-covered hills. There he constructed an enclosure, 
aqueducts, baths, houses, a town in fact, which he called after 
himself, Aquce Sextice, the modern Aix, the first Roman establish- 
ment in Transalpine Gaul. As in the case of Cisalpine Gaul, with 
Roman colonies came Roman intrigue, and dissensions got up and 
War be- fomented amongst the Gauls. The Gauls, moreover, ran of 
tween the themselves into the Roman trap. Two of their confederations, 
and the ^^^ .(Eduans, of whom mention has already been made, and the 
Allohro- Allobrogians, who were settled between the Alps, the Isere, and 
gians. ^j^g Rhone, were at war. A third confederation, the most powerful 
in Gaul at this time, the Arvernians, who were rivals of the 
.^duans, gave their countenance to the Allobrogians. The 
.^duans, with whom the Massilians had commercial dealings, 
solicited through these latter the assistance of Rome. A treaty 
was easily concluded. The ^duans obtained from the Romans the 
title friends and allies; and the Romans received from the iEduans 



The Gauls and the Romans. 9 

that of brothers, which amongst the Gauls implied a sacred tie. 
The consul Domitius forthwith commanded the Allobrogians to 
respect the territory of the allies of Eome. War broke out ; the 
Allobrogian«, Avith the usual confidence and hastiness of all bar- 
barians, attacked alone, without waiting for the Arvernians, and 
were beaten at the confluence of the Ehone and the Sorgue, a little 
above Avignon. The next year, 121 B.C., the Arvernians in their j'^g^^^^j. 
turn descended from the mountains, and crossed the Rhone with all nians cross 
their tribes ; they were beaten, as the Allobrogians had been, t^^ Kbone. 
Kome treated the Arvernians with consideration ; but the Allo- 
brogians lost their existence as a nation. The Senate declared 
them subject to the Roman people ; and all the country comprised 
between the Alps, the Rhone from its entry into the Lake of 
Geneva to its mouth, and the Mediterranean, was made a Roman 
consular province. In the three following years, indeed, the 
consuls extended the boundaries of the new province, on the right 
bank of the Rhone, to the frontier of the Pyrenees southward. 

In the year 110 B.c. the Kymrians or Cimbrians, and the B.C. 110. 
Teutons, having their numbers swelled by other tribes, Gallic or jians and 
German, the Ambrons, among others, entered Gaul, at first by way the Teu- 
of Belgica, and then, continuing their wanderings and ravages in °'^®* 
central Gaul, they at last reached the Rhone, on the frontiers of the 
Roman province. There four successive armies were defeated and 
slaughtered by the barbarians ; but at last Marius attacked them 
(102 B.C.) near Aix {Aquce Sextice). The battle lasted two days; B.C. 102. 
the first against the Atnbrons, the second against the Teutons. Defeated 
Both were beaten, in spite of their savage bravery, and the equal by Marius. 
bravery of their women, who defended, with indomitable obstinacy, 
the cars with which they had remained almost alone, in charge of 
the children and the booty. There remained the Kymrians, who 
had repassed the Helvetic Alps and entered Italy on the north- 
east, by way of the Adige. Marius marched against them in July 
of the following year, 101 B.C., and defeated them in the Raudine 
Plains, a large tract near Verceil. 

The victories of Marius arrested the torrent of the invasion, but 
did not dry up its source. The great movement which drove from 
Asia to Europe, and from eastern to western Europe, masses of 
roving populations, followed its course, bringing incessantly upon 
the Roman frontiers new comers and new perils. A greater man 
than Marius, Julius Caesar in fact, saw that to effectually resi.st these 
clouds of barbaric assailants, the country into which they poured 
must be conquered and made Roman. The conquest of Gaul was 



10 History of France. 

the accomplishment of that idea, and the decisiA'^e step towards the 
transformation of the Roman republic into a Roman empire. 
ArioviUttu. In spite of the victories of Marius, and the destruction or disper- 
sion of the Teutons and Cimbrians, the whole of Gaul remained 
seriously disturbed and threatened. In eastern and central Gaul, 
in the valleys of the Jura and Auvergne, on the banks of the 
Saone, the Allier, and the Doubs, the two great Gallic confedera- 
tions, that of the ^duans and that of the Arvernians, were dis- 
puting the preponderance, and making war one upon another, 
seeking the aid, respectively, of the Romans and of the Germans. 
Every where floods of barbaric populations were pressing upon 
Gaul, were carrying disquietude even where they had not them- 
selves yet penetrated, and causing presentiments of a general com- 
motion. The danger burst before long upon particular places and 
in connexion with particular names which have remained historical. 
In the war with the confederation of the ^duans, that of the 
Arvernians called to their aid the German Ariovistus, chieftain of 
a confederation of tribes which, under the name of Suevians, were 
roving over the right bank of the Rhine, ready at any time to cross 
the river. Ariovistus, with 15,000 warriors at his back, was not 
slow in responding to the appeal. The ^duans were beaten ; and 
Ariovistus settled amongst the Gauls, Avho had been thoughtless 
enough to appeal to him. IS^umerous bands of the Suevians came 
and rejoined him ; and in two or three years after his victory he 
had about him, it was said, 120,000 warriors. He had appro- 
priated to them a third of the territory of his Gallic allies, and he 
imperiously demanded another third to satisfy other 25,000 of his 
old German comrades, who asked to share his booty and his new 
country. One of the foremost ^duans, Divitiacus by name, w^ent 
and invoked the succour of the Roman people, the patrons of his 
confederation. The Roman Senate, with the indecifiion and in- 
dolence of all declining powers, hesitated to engage, for the 
^duans' sake, in a war against the invaders of a corner of Gallic 
territory. At the same time that they gave a cordial welcome to 
Divitiacus, they entered into negotiations with Ariovistus himself; 
they gave him beautiful presents, the title of King, and even of 
friend ; the only demand they made was that he should live peace- 
ably in his new settlement, and not lend his support to the fresh 
invasions of which there were symptoms in Gaul, and which were 
becoming too se-rious for resolutions not to be taken to repel them. 
A people of Gallic race, the Helvetians, who inhabited the present 
Switzerland, where the old name still abides beside the modern, 



The Gauls and the Romans. 1 1 

found themselves incessantly threatened, ravaged, and invaded by 
the German tribes which pressed upon their frontiers. After some 
years of perplexity and internal discord, the whole Helvetic nation 
decided upon abandoning its territory, and going to seek in Gaul, 
westward, it is said, on the borders of the ocean, a more tranquil 
settlement. Being informed of this design, the Eoman Senate and 
Caesar, at that time consul, resolved to protect the Eoman province 
and their Gallic allies, the ^duans, against this inundation of 
roving neighbours. The Helvetians none the less persisted in 
their plan; and in the spring of the year of Eome 696 (58 B.C.) 
they committed to the flames, in the country they were about to 
leave, twelve towns, four hundred villages, and all their houi?es ; B-C» 58. 
loaded their cars with provisions for three months, and agreed to yetians 
meet at the southern point of the Lake of Geneva. But when they attempt to 
would have entered Gaul, they found there Ceasar, who after having ^7^ ® 
got himself appointed proconsul for five years, had arrived suddenly 
at Geneva, prepared to forbid their passage. Thus foiled, they at- 
tempted to take another road, and to cross not the Eh one but the 
Saone, and march thence towards western Gaul. But whilst they 
were arranging for the execution of this movement, Csesar, who had 
up to that time only four legions at his disposal, returned to 
Italy, brought away five fresh legions, and arrived on the left 
bank of the Saone at the moment when the rear-guard of the Hel- 
vetians was embarking to rejoin the main body which had already 
pitched its camp on the right bank. Cjfisar cut to pieces this rear- 
guard, crossed the river in his turn with his legions, pursued the 
emigrants without relaxation, came in contact with them on several 
occasions, at one time attacking them or repelling their attacks, at 
another receiving and giving audience to their envoys without ever 
consenting to treat with them, and before the endof theyeor he had 
so completely beaten, decimated, dispersed and driven them back, 
that of 368,000 Helvetians who had entered Gaul, but 110,000 
escaped from the Eomans, and were enabled by flight to regain 
their country. 

.^duans, Sequanians, or Arvernians, all the Gauls interested in 
the struggle thus terminated, were eager to congratulate Ceesar upon 
his victory ; but if they were delivered from the invasion of the 
Helvetians, another scourge fell heavily upon them ; Ariovistus 
and the Germans, who were settled upon their territory, op- 
pressed them cruelly, and day by day fresh bands were continually 
coming to aggravate the evil and the danger. They adjured 
Caesar to protect them from these swarms of barbarians. The 



12 



History of France. 



Csesar e'x- 
pels ihe 
Helve- 
tians. 



A.TJ.C. 6£6 
—705. 

Campaigns 
of Caesar in 
Gaul. 



Eoman general gave ear to the prayer of the Gauls ; after having 
uselessly attempted to negotiate with the German chieftain, find- 
ing that Ariovistus with all his forces was making towards 
VesonUo (Besan9on), the chief town of the Sequanians, he forthwith 
put himself in motion, occupied Yesontio, established there a 
strong garrison, and fetching a considerable compass to spare his 
soldiers the passage of thick forests, after a seven days' march, 
arrived at a short distance from the camp of Ariovistus. Several 
days in succession he offered battle ; but Ariovistus remained 
within his lines. Csesar then took the resolution of assailing the 
German camp. At his approach, the Germans at length moved 
out from their entrenchments, arrayed by peoplets, and defiling in 
front of cars filled with their women, who implored them with 
tears not to deliver them in slavery to the Romans. The struggle 
■was obstinate, and not without moments of anxiety and partial 
check for the Romans ; but the genius of Caesar and strict dis- 
cipline of the legions carried the day. The rout of the Germans 
was complete ; they fled towards the Rhine, which was only a few 
leagues from the field of battle. Ariovistus himself was amongst 
the fugitives ; he found a boat by the river-side, and re-crossed 
into Germany, where he died shortly afteiwards, "to the great grief 
of the Germans," says Csesar, The Suevian bands, who were 
awaiting on the right bank the result of the struggle, plunged 
back again within their own territory. And so the invasion of 
the Germans was stopped as the emigration of the Helvetians 
had been ; and Csesar had only to conquer Gaul. 

The expulsion of the Helvetian emigrants and of the German 
invaders left the Romans and Gauls alone face to face ; and from 
that moment the Romans were, in ^|he eyes of the Gauls, foreigners, 
conquerors, oppressors. Conspiracies were hatched, insurrections 
soon broke out in nearly every part of Gaul, in the heart even of 
the peoplets most subject to Roman dominion. Every movement 
of the kind was for Caesar a provocation, a temptation, almost an 
obligation to conquest. He accepted them and profited by them, 
•with that promptitude in resolution, boldness and address in 
execution, and cool indifl'erence as to the means employed, which 
were characteristic of his genius. During nine years, from A.U.C. 
696 to 705, and in eight successive campaigns, he carried his 
troops, his lieutenants, himself, and, ere long, war or negotiation, 
corruption, discord, or destruction in his path, amongst the different 
nations and confederations of Gaul, Celtic, Kymric, Germanic, 
Iberian or hybrid, northward and eastward, in Belgica, between 



The Gauls and the Romans. 1 3 

the Seine and the Ehine ; westward, in Armorica, on the borders 
of the ocean ; south-westward, in Aquitania ; centre-ward amongst 
the peoplets established between the Seine, the Loire and the 
Saone. He was nearly always victorious, and then at one time 
he pushed his victory to the bitter end, at another stopped at 
the right moment, that it might not be compromised. He did 
not confine himself to conquering and subjecting the Gauls in 
Gaul ; his ideas were ever out-stripping his deeds, and he knew 
how to make his power felt even where he had made no attempt 
to establish it. Twice he crossed the Rhine to hurl back the 
Germans beyond their river, and to strike to the very hearts of 
their forests the terror of the Roman name (a.u.c. 699, 700). He 
equipped two fleets, made two descents on Great Britain (a.u.c. 
699, 700), several times defeated the Britons and their principal 
chieftain Caswallon (Cassivellaunus), and set up, across the channel, 
the first landmarks of Roman conquest. He thus became more 
and more famous and terrible, both in Gaul, whence he sometimes 
departed for a moment, to go and look after his political pros- 
pects in Italy, and in more distant lands, where he was but an ap- 
parition. ISTor were the rigours of administration less than those His admi- 
of warfare. Cajsar wanted a great deal of money, not only to main- nistration. 
tain satisfactorily his troops in Gaul, but to defray the enormous 
expenses he was at in Italy, for the purpose of enriching his par- 
tisans, or securing the favour of the Roman people. It was with 
the produce of imposts and plunder in Gaul that he undertook the 
reconstruction at Rome of the basilica of the Forum, the site 
whereof, extending to the temple of Liberty, was valued, it is 
said, at more than twenty million five hundred thousand francs 
(820,000Z.). 

After six years' struggling Caesar was victor; he had successively A.1I.C.7C2. 
dealt with all the different populations of Gaul ; he had passed getorj^^ 
through and subjected them all, either by his own strong arm, or 
thanks to their rivalries. In the year of Rome 702 he was sud- 
denly informed in Italy, whither he had gone on his Roman, 
business, that most of the Gallic nations, united under a chieftain 
hitherto unknown, were rising with one common impulse, and 
recommencing war. Amongst the Arvernians lived a young Gaul 
whose real name has remained unknown, and whom history has 
called Vercingetorix, that is, chief over a hundred heads, general- 
in-chief. He came of an ancient and powerful family, and his 
father had been put to death in his own city for attempting to 
make himself king. Cassar knew him, and had taken some pains 
to attach him to himselfl It does not appear that the Arvernian 



14 History of France, 

aristocrat had absolutely declined the overtures ; but when the 
hope of national independence was aroused, Yercingetorix was its 
representative and chief. He descended with his followers from 
the mountains, and seized Gergovia, the capital of his nation. 
Thence his messengers spread over the centre, the north-west, and 
west of Gaul ; the greater part of the peoplets and cities of those 
regions pronounced from the first moment for insurrection, Yer- 
cingetorix was immediately invested with the chief command, and 
he made use of it Avith all the passion engendered by patriotism 
and the possession of power; he regulated the movement, demanded 
hostages, fixed the contingents of troops, imposed taxes, inflicted 
summary punishment on the traitors, the dastards and the indif- 
ferent, and subjected those who turned a deaf ear to the appeal 
of their common country to the same pains and the same mutila- 
tions that Caesar inflicted on those who obstinately resisted the 
Roman yoke. 

At the news of this great movement Caesar immediately left 
Italy, and returned to Gaul. Starting at the beginning of 702 A.U.C., 
he passed two months in traversing within Gaul the Roman 
province and its neighbourhood, in visiting the points threatened 
by the insurrection, and the openings by which he might get 
at it, in assembling his troops, in confirming his wavering allies ; 
and it was not before the early part of March that he moved with 
his whole army to Agendicum (Sens), the very centre of revolt, 
and started thence to push on the war with vigour. In less than 
three months he had spread devastation throughout the insurgent 
country ; he had attacked and taken its principal cities, Yellaunod- 
unum (Trigueres), Genabum (Gien), Noviodunum (Sancerre), and 
Avaricum (Bourges), delivering up every where country and city, 
lands and inhabitants, to the rage of the Roman soldiery, maddened 
at having again to conquer enemies so often conquered. To strike 
a decisive blow, he penetrated at last to the heart of the country 
of the Arvernians, and laid siege to Gergovia, their capital and the 
birthplace of Yercingetorix. 
Defeat of -^^^ firmness and the ability of the Gallic chieftain were not 
Vercin- inferior to such a struggle ; Csesar encountered an obstinate re- 
getoriz sistance ; whilst Yercingetorix, encamped on the heights which 
surrounded his birthplace, every where embarrassed, sometimes 
attacked, and incessaiitly threatened the Romans, The eighth 
legion, drawn on one day to make an imprudent assault, was 
repulsed, and lost forty-six of its bravest centurions. Caesar de- 
termined to raise the siege, and to transfer the struggle to places 
■where the population could be more safely depended upon. It was 



The Gauls and the Romans* 15 

the first decisive check he had experienced in Gaul, the first Gallic 
town he had been unable to take, the first retrograde movement 
he had executed in the face of the GalKc insurgents and their 
chieftain. Vercingetorix could not and would not restrain his 
joy \ it seemed to him that the day had darwned and an excellent 
chance arrived for attempting a decisive blow. He had under his 
orders, it is said, 80,000 men, mostly his own Arvernians, and 
a numerous cavalry furnished by the different peoplets his allies. 
He followed all Caesar's movements in retreat towards the Saone, 
and on arriving at Longeau, not far from Langres, near a little river 
called the Vingeanne, he halted and pitched his camp about nine 
miles from the Eomans. The action began between the cavalry on 
both sides ; a portion of the Gallic had taken up position on the 
road followed by the Eoman army, to bar its passage ; but whilst 
the fighting at this point was getting more and more obstinate, the 
German horse in Caesar's service gained a neighbouring height, 
drove off the Gallic horse that were in occupation, and pursued 
them as far as the river, near which was Vercingetorix with his 
infantry. Disorder took place amongst this infantry so unexpectedly 
attacked. Caesar launched his legions at them, and there was a 
general panic and rout among the Gauls. "Vercingetorix had 
great trouble in rallying them, and he rallied them only to order a 
general retreat, for which they clamoured. Hurriedly striking his 
camp, he made for Alesia (Semur in Auxois), a neighbouring town 
and the capital of the Mandubians, a peoplet in clientship to the 
^duans. Caesar immediately went in pursuit of the Gauls ; killed, 
he says, 3000 ; made important prisoners ; and encamped with his 
legions before Alesia the day but one after Vercingetorix, with his 
fugitive army, had occupied the place as well as the neighbouring 
hills, and was hard at work intrenching himself, probably without 
any clear idea as yet of what he should do to continue the struggle. 
Caesar at once took a resolution as unexpectedly as it was dis- 
creetly bold. Here was the Avhole Gallic insurrection, chieftain and 
soldiery, united together within or beneath the walls of a town 
of moderate extent. He undertook to keep it there and destroy 
it on the spot, instead of having to pursue it every whither with- 
out ever being sure of getting at it. The struggle was fierce, but siege of 
short. Every time that the fresh Gallic army attacked the be- Alesia. 
siegers, Vercingetorix and the Gauls of Alesia sallied forth, and 
joined in the attack. Caesar and his legions, on their side, at one 
time repulsed these double attacks, at another themselves took the 
initiative, and assailed at one and the same time the besieged and 
the auxiliaries Gaul had sent them. The feeling was passionate 



l6 History of France. 

on both sides : Homan pride was pitted against Gallic patriotism. 
But in four or iive days the strong organization, the disciplined 
valour of the Roman legions, and the genius of Csesar triumphed. 
The Gallic reinforcements, beaten and slaughtered without mercy, 
dispersed ; and Vercingetorix and the besieged were crowded back 
within their walls without hope of escape. 

Alesia taken, and her brave defender a prisoner, Gaul was 
subdued. Ciesar, however, had in the following year (a.u.c. 703) 
a campaign to make to subjugate some peoplets who tried to main- 
tain their local independence. A year afterwards, again, attempts 
at insurrection took place in Belgica, and towards the mouth of the 
Loire ; but they were easily repressed ; they had no national or 
formidable characteristics ; Caesar and his lieutenants willingly 
contented themselves with an apparent submission, and in the 
year 705 a.u.c. the Eoman legions, after nine years' occupation in 
the conquest of Gaul, were able to depart therefrom to Italy and the 
East for a plunge into civil war. 
Gatil under From the conquest of Gaul by Cassar to the establishment there 
Boman do- ^^ i^^ Franks under Clovis, she remained for more than five 
centuries under Roman dominion ; first under the Pagan, afterwards 
under the Christian empire. In her primitive state of independence 
she had struggled for ten years against the best armies and the 
greatest man of Rome ; after five centuries of Roman dominion she 
opposed no resistance to the invasion of the barbarians, Germans, 
Goths, Alans, Burgundians, and Franks, who destroyed bit by bit 
the Roman empire. In this humiliation and, one might say, 
annihilation of a population so independent, so active, and so 
valiant at its first appearance in history, is to be seen the charac- 
teristic of this long epoch. It is worth while to learn and to 
understand how it was. 

Gaul lived, during those five centuries, under very different 
rules and rulers. They may be summed up under five names 
which correspond with governments very unequal in merit and 
defect, in good and evil wrought for their epoch : 1st, the Caesars, 
from Julius to Nero (from 49 b.c. to a.d. 68) ; 2nd, the Flavians, 
from Vespasian to Domitian (from a.d. 69 to 95) ; 3rd, the 
Antonines, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (from a.d. 96 to 180) ; 
4th, the imperial anarchy, or the thirty-nine emperors and the 
thirty-one tyrants, from Commodus to Cariuus and Numerian 
(from A.D. 180 to 284) ; 5th, Diocletian (from a.d. 284 to 305). 
Through all these governments, and in spite of their difi'erent 
results for their contemporary subjects, the fact already pointed out 
as the general and definite charasteristic of that long epoch, to wit, 



The Gauls and the Romans. 17 

the moral and social decadence of Gaul as well as of the Eoman 

empire, never ceased to continue and spread. 

On quitting conquered Gaul to become master at Eome, Caesar New divi- 

nesrlected nothing to assure his conquest and make it conducive to ^^°° °^ *^® 

,. . . . country, 

the establishment of his empire: He formed of all the Gallic 

districts that he had subjugated a special province, which received 
the name of Gallia Gomata (Gaul of the long-hair), whilst the old 
province was called Gallia Torjata (Gaul of the toga). Caesar 
caused to be enrolled amongst his troops a multitude of Gauls, 
Belgians, Arvernians, and Aquitanians, of whose bravery he had 
■made proof. He even formed, almost entirely of Gauls, a special 
legion, called Alauda (lark), because it bore on the helmets a lark 
with out-spread wings, the symbol of wakefulness. At the same 
time he gave in Gallia Coviafa, to the towns and families that 
declared for him, all kinds of favours, the rights of Eoman citizen- 
ship, the titles of allies, clients, and friends, even to the extent 
of the Julian name, a sign of the most powerful Eoman patronage. 

After Caesar, Augustus, left sole master of the Eoman world, Aug nstus. 
assumed in Gaul, as elsewhere, the part of pacificator, repairer, con- Character 
servator, and organizer, whilst taking care, with all his moderation, vernmeat. 
to remain always the master. He divided the provinces into im- 
perial and senatorial, reserving to himself the entire government 
of the former, and leaving the latter under the authority of the 
senate. Gaul " of the long hair," all that Caesar had conquered, 
was imperial province. Augustus divided it into three districts, 
Lugdunensian (Lyonese), Belgian, and Aquitanian. He recognized 
therein sixty nations or distinct cityships which continued to have 
themselves the government of their own affairs, according to their . 
traditions and manners, whilst conforming to the general laws of 
the empire and abiding under the supervision of imperial governors, 
charged with maintaining every where, in the words of Pliny the 
Younger, "the majesty of Eoman peace." The administrative 
energy of Augustus was -not confined to the erection of monuments 
and to festivals ; he applied himself to the development in Gaul of 
the material elements of civilization and social order. His most 
intimate and able adviser, Agrippa, being settled at Lyons as 
governor of the Gauls, caused to be opened four great roads, starting 
from a mile- stone placed in the middle of the Lyonese forum, and 
going, one centrewards to Saintes and the ocean, another south- 
wards to J^arbonne and the Pyrenees, the third north-westwards 
and towards the Channel by Amiens and Boulogne, and the fourth 
north-westwards and towards the Ehine. Agrippa founded several 
considerable colonies, amongst others Cologne, which bore his name ; 





I8 



History of France. 



and he admitted to Gallic territory bands of Germans who aslted 
for an establishment there. 

But side by side with this work in the cause of civilization 
and organization, Augustus and his Eoman agents were pursuing 
a work of quite a contrary tendency. They laboured to extirpate 
from Gaul the spirit of nationality, independence and freedom ; 
they took every pains to efface every where Gallic memories and 
sentiments. Gallic towns were L'sing their old and receiving 
Eoman names : Augustonemetum, Augusta, and Augustodunum took 
the place of Gergovia, Noviodanum, and Bihrade. The national 
Gallic religion, which was Druidism, was attacked as well as the 
Gallic fatherland, with the same design and by the same means, 

Tiberius carried on in Gaul, but with less energy and less care 
for the provincial administration, the pacific and moderate policy 
of Augustus. He had to extinguish in Belgica, and even in the 
Lyonese province, two insurrections kindled by the sparks that 
remained of national and Druidic spirit. He repressed them 
effectually, and without any violent display of vengeance. He 
was succeeded by Germanicus' unworthy son, Caligula, who did 
just one sensible and useful thing during the whole of his stay in 
Gaul : he had a light house constructed to illumine the passage 
between Gaul and Great Britain. Some traces of it, they say, 
have been discovered. 

His successor, Claudius, brother of the great Germanicus, and 
married to his own niece, the second Agrippina, was born at Lyons, 
at the very moment when his father, Drusus, was celebrating there 
the erection of an altar to Augustus. During his whole reign he 
showed to the city of his birth the most lively good-will, and the 
constant aim as well as principal result of this good-will was to 
render the city of Lyons more and more Eoman by effacing all 
Gallic characteristics and memories. He undertook to assure to all 
free men of " long-haired " Gaul the same Eoman privileges that 
were enjoyed by the inhabitants of Lyons ; and, amongst others, 
that of entering the senate of Eome and holding the great public 
offices. He was, however, neither liberal nor humane towards a 
notable portion of the Gallic populations, to wit, the Druids. 
During his stay in Gaul he proscribed them and persecuted them 
without intermission ; forbidding, under pain of death, their form 
of worship and every exterior sign of their ceremonies. He drove 
them away and pursued them even into Great Britain, whither he 
conducted, a.d, 43, a military expedition. In proportion as Claudius 
had been popular in Gaul did his adopted son and successor, Nero, 
quickly become hated. At the vacancy that occuixed after his 



The Gauls and the Romans. 19 

death, and amid the claims of various pretenders, the authority of 
the Eoi:j}an name and the pressure of the imperial power diminished 
rapidly in Gaul ; and the memory and desire of independence were 
re-awakened. In the northern part of Belgica, towards the mouths A.D. 70. 
of the Ehine, where a Batavian peoplet lived, a man of note amongst ^^^f^lVl'^ 
his compatriots and in the service of the Eomans, amongst whom 
he had received the name of Claudius Civilis, embraced first 
secretly, and afterwards openly, the cause of insurrection. Petilius 
Cerealis, a coiiimander of renown for his campaigns on the Ehine, 
was sent off to Belgica with seven fresh legions. He was as skilful 
in negotiation and persuasion as he was in battle. The struggle 
that ensued was fierce, but brief; and nearly all the towns and 
legions that had been guilty of defection returned to their Eoman 
allegiance. Civilis, though not more than half vanquished, himself 
asked leave to surrender. The Batavian might, as was said at the 
time, have inundated the country, and drowned the Eoman armies. 
Vespasian, therefore, not being inclined to drive men or matters to 
extremity, gave Civilis leave to go into retirement and live in peace 
amongst the marshes of his own land. The Gallic chieftains alone, 
the projectors of a Gallic empire, were rigorously pursued and 
chastised. 

During the period known in history as the age of the Antonines The Anto- 
(a.d. 96 — 180), five notable sovereigns, jSTerva, Trajan, Hadrian, ^'"^^^' 
Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius swayed the Eoman empire. 
It would be a great error to take them as representatives of the 
society amidst which they lived, and as giving, in a certain degree, 
the measure of its enlightenment, its morality, its prosperity, its 
disposition and condition in general. Those five princes were not 
only picked men, superior in mind and character to the majority of 
their contemporaries, but they were men almost isolated in their 
generation : in them there was a resumption of all that had been 
acquired by Greek and Eoman antiquity of enlightenment and 
virtue, practical wisdom and philosophical morality : they were the 
heirs and the survivors of the great minds and the great politicians 
of Athens and Eome, of the Areopagus and the Senate. They 
were not in intellectual and moral harmony with the society they 
governed, and their action upon it served hardly to preserve it 
partially and temporarily from the evils to which it was committed 
by its own vices and to break its fall. When they were thoughtful 
and modest, as Marcus Aurelius was, they were gloomy and dis- 
posed to discouragement, for they had a secret foreboding of the 
uselessness of their efforts. The empe- 

After the death of Marcus Anrelius decay manifested and JJIrcu"^^ 

2 Aarelins. 



20 History of France. 

developed itself, almost without interruption for the space of a 
century, the outward and visible sign of it being the disorganization 
and repeated falls of the government itself. The series of em- 
perors given to the Eoman world by heirship or adoption, from 
Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, was succeeded by what may be 
termed an imperial anarchy; in the course of one hundred and 
thirty-two years the sceptre passed into the hands of thirty- nine 
sovereigns with the title of etnperor [Augustus), and was clutched 
at by thirty-one pretenders, whom history has dubbed tyrants, and 
amongst whom were Italians, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, Britons, 
Illyrians, and Asiatics ; in the number could be found some cases 
of eminence in war and politics, and some even of rare virtue and 
patriotism, such as Pertinax, Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, 
Decius, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Tacitus, and Probus. Gaul 
had her share in this series of ephemeral emperors and tyrants ; 
one of the most wicked and most insane, though issue of one of 
the most valorous and able, Caracalla, son of Septimius Severus, 
was born at Lyons, four years after the death of Marcus Aurelius. 
A hundred years later Narbonne gave, in two years, to the Eoman 
world three emperors. Cams and his two sons, Carinus and Ij^ume- 
rian. Amongst the thirty-one tyrants who did not attain to the 
title of Augustus, six were Gauls ; and the last two, Amandus and 
^lianus, were, a.d. 285, the chiefs of that great insurrection of 
peasants, slaves or half-slaA'^es, who, under the name of Bagaudians 
(signifying, according to Ducange, a wandering troop of insurgents 
from field and forest), spread themselves over the north of Gaul, 
between the Ehine and the Loire, pillaging and ravaging in all 
directions, after having themselves endured the pillaging and 
ravages of the fiscal agents and soldiers of the Empire. 

A.D. 245 When public evils have reached such a pitch, and nevertheless 

313. the day has not yet arrived for the entire disappearance of the 
* system that causes them, there arises nearly always a new power, 
which, in the name of necessity, applies some remedy to an in- 
tolerable condition. On the present occasion that power was 
wielded by a Dalmatian soldier, named Diocletian, who having 
been raised to the throne, set to work ably, if not successfully, to 
master the difficulty of government. Convinced that the empire 
was too vast, and that a single man did not suffice to make head 
against the two evils that were destroying it — war against bar- 
barians on the frontiers, and anarchy within — he divided the Eoman 
world into two portions, gave the West to Maximian, one of his com- 
rades, a coarse but valiant soldier, and kept the East himself. To 
the anarchy that reigned within he opposed a general despotic admi- 



The Gauls and the Romans. 21 

nistrative organization, a vast Merarchy of civil and military agents, 
every where present, every where masters, and dependent upon the 
emperor alone. By his incontestable and admitted superiority, 
Diocletian remained the soul of these two hodies. At the end of 
eight years he saw that the two empires Avere still too vast ; and to 
each Augustus he added a Csesar— Galerius and Constantius Chlorus 
— who, save a nominal, rather than a real, subordination to the two 
emperors, had, each in his own State, the imperial power with the 
same administrative system. In this partition of the Roman world 
Gaul had the best of it ; she had for master Constantius Chlorus, a 
tried warrior, but just, gentle, and disposed to temper the exercise 
of absolute power with moderation and equity. He had a son, 
Constantine, at this time eighteen years of age, whom he was 
educating carefully for government as well as for war. Weary, 
however, of his burden, and disgusted with the imperfection of his 
work, Diocletian abdicated, a.d. 305. He had persuaded or rather 
dragged his first colleague, Maximian, into abdication after him ; 
and so Galerius in the East, and Constantius Chlorus in the West, 
remained sole emperors. After the retirement of Diocletian, 
ambitions, rivalries and intrigues were not slow to make head; 
Maximian reappeared on the scene of empire, but only to speedily 
disappear (a.d. 310), leaving in his place his son Maxentius. 
Constantius Chlorus had died a.d. 306, and his son, Constantine, 
had immediately been proclaimed by his army C?esar and Augustus. 
Galerius died A.D. 311, and Constantine remained to dispute the Constan- 
mastery with Maxentius in the West, and in the East with Maxi- ^^^ ^^^ 
minus and Licinius, the last colleagues taken by Diocletian and 
Galerius. On the 29th of October, a.d. 312, after having gained 
several battles against Maxentius in Italy, at Milan, Brescia, and 
Verona, Constantine pursued and defeated him before Eome, on 
the borders of the Tiber, at the foot of the Milvian bridge ; and 
the son of Maximian, drowned in the Tiber, left to the son of 
Constantius Chlorus the Empire of the West, to which that of the 
East was destined to be in a few years added, by the defeat and 
death of Licinius. Constantine, more clear-sighted and more 
fortunate than any of his predecessors, had understood his era, and 
opened his eyes to the new light which was rising upon the world. 
Ear from persecuting the Christians, he had given them protection, 
countenance, and audience; and towards him turned all their 
hopes. He had even, it is said, in his last battle against Maxen- 
tius, displayed the Christian banner, the cross, with this inscrip- 
tion : Hoc signo vinces (" With this device thou shalt conquer"). 
There is no knowing what was at that time the state oi his soul. 



22 History of France, 

and to what extent it was penetrated by tlie first rays of Christian 
faith ; but it is certain that he was the first amongst the masters of 
the Eoman world to perceive and accept its influence. With him 
Paganism fell, and Christianity mounted the throne. With him 
the decay of Eoman society stops, and the era of modern society 
commences. 




CHAPTER II. 



CHRISTIANITY IN GAUL. — THE BARBARIANS. — ^THE MEROVINGIAN 
DY NASTY. — CHARLEMAGNE. 

When Christlaiuty began to penetrate into Gaul, it encountered 
there two religions very different one from the other, and infinitely 
more different from the Christian religion ; these were Druidisra 
and Paganism — hostile one to the other, but with a hostility 
political only, and unconnected with those really religious questions 
that Christianity was coming to raise. 

Druidism, considered as a religion, was a mass of confusion, Draidisou 
wherein the instinctive notions of the human race concerning the 
origin and destiny of the world and of mankind were mingled with 
the oriental dreams of metempsychosis — that pretended transmigra- 
tion, at successive periods, of immortal souls into divers creatures. 
This confusion was worse confounded by traditions borrowed from 
the mythologies of the East and the l^orth, by shadowy remnants 
of a symbolical worship paid to the material forces of nature, and 
by barbaric practices, such as human sacrifices, in honour of the 
gods or of the dead. A general and strong, but vague and inco- 
herent, belief in the immortality of the soul was its noblest 
characteristic. But with the religious elements, at the same time 
coarse and mystical, were united two facts of importance : the 
Druids formed a veritable ecclesiastical corporation ; and ia 



24 



History of France. 



Chris^l- 
anicy. 



tlie wars witL. Eome this corporation became the most faithful 
representatives and the most persistent defenders of Gallic inde- 
pendence and nationality. 

The Grseco-Eoman Paganism was, at this time, far more powerful 
than Druidism in Gaul, and yet more lukewarm and destitute of 
all religious vitality. It was the religion of the conquerors and of 
the State, and was invested, in that quality, with real power ; but 
beyond that, it had but the power derived from popular customs 
and superstitions. As a religious creed, the Latin Paganism was at 
bottom empty, indifferent, and inclined to tolerate all religions in 
the State, provided only that they, in tbeir turn, were indifferent 
at any rate towards itself, and that they did not come troubling the 
State, either by disobeying her rulers or by attacking her old 
deities, dead and buried beneath their own still standing altars. 

Such were the two religions with which in Gaul nascent Chris- 
tianity had to contend. Compared with them it was, to aU 
appearance, very small and very weak ; but it was provided witlx 
the most efficient weapons for fighting and beating them, for it 
had exactly the moral forces which they lacked. To the pagan 
indifference of the Roman world the Christians opposed the pro- 
found conviction of their faith, and not only their firmness in 
defending it against all powers and all dangers, but also their 
ardent passion for propagating it, without any motive but the 
yearning to make their fellows share in its beneMts and its hopes. 
And it was not in memory of old and obsolete mythologies, but in 
the name of recent deeds and persons, in obedience to laws pro- 
ceeding from God, One and Universal, in fulfilment and continua- 
tion of a contemporary and superhuman history — that of Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man — that the Christians of 
the first two centuries laboured to convert to their faith the whole 
Roman world. It is impossible to assign with exactness the date 
of the first foot-prints and first labours of Christianity in Gaul. 
It was not, however, from Italy, nor in the Latin tongue and 
through Latin writers, but from the East and through the Greeks, 
that it first came and began to spread. Marseilles and the different 
Greek colonies, originally from Asia Minor, and settled upon the 
shores of the Mediterranean or along the Ehone, mark the route, 
and were the places whither the first Christian missionaries carried 
their teaching : on this point the letters of the Apostles and the 
writings of the first two generations of their disciples are clear and 
TheChurch abiding proof. Lyons became the chief centre of Christian preach- 
at Lyons. ^^ ^^^^ association in Gaul. As early as the first half of the second 
century there existed there a Christian congregation, regularly 



Christianity in Gaul. 25 

organized aa a Church, and already suflBciently important to be in 

intimate and frequent communication with the Christian Churches 

of the East and West. There is a tradition, generally admitted, 

that St. Pothinus, the first Bishop of Lyons, was sent thither from 

the East by the Bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, himself a disciple 

of St. John. One thing is certain, that the Christian Church of 

Lyons produced Gaul's first martyrs, amongst whom was the 

Bishop, St. Pothinus. 

It was under Marcus Aurelius, the most philosophical and most 

conscientious of the emperors, that there was enacted for the first 

time in Gaul, against nascent Christianity, that scene of tyranny 

and barbarity which was to be renewed so often and during so 

many centuries in the midst of Christendom itself; for in the year „ • * ^'* 
•^ . J J rerrecu- 

177, that is only three years after the victory of Marcus Aurelius tion of the 
o-ver the Germans, there took place, undoubtedly by his orders, the CJi^istans. 
persecution which caused at Lyons the first Gallic martyrdom. 
This was the fourth, or, according to others, the fifth great imperial 
persecution of the Christians. 

Most tales of the martyrs were written long after the event, and 
came to be nothing more than legends laden with details often 
utterly puerile or devoid of proof. The martyrs of Lyons in the 
second century wrote, so to speak, their own history ; for it was 
their comrades, eye-witnesses of their sufferings and their virtue, 
who gave an account of them in a long letter addressed to their 
friends in Asia Minor, and written with passionate sympathy and 
pious prolixity, but bearing all the characteristics of truth. 

The persecution of the Christians did not stop at Lyons, or 

■with Marcus Aurelius ; it became, during the third century, the 

common practice of the emperors in all parts of the empire : from 

A.D. 202 to 312, under the reigns of Septimius Severus, Maximinus A.D. 202— 

the Eirst, Decius, Valerian, Aurclian, Diocletian, Maximian, and _. ^^ • 

' ' ' ' . . ' Six perse- 

Galerius, there are reckoned six great general persecutions, without cutioas. 

counting others more circumscribed or less severe. The emperors 

Alexander Severus, Philip the Arabian, and Constantius Chloru3 

were almost the only exceptions to this cruel system ; and nearly 

always, wherever it was in force, the Pagan mob, in its brutality or 

fanatical superstition, added to imperial rigour its own atrocious 

and cynical excesses. 

But Christian zeal was supeiior in perseverance and efficacy to 

Pagan persecution. St. Pothinus the Martyr was succeeded as 

bishop at Lyons by St. Irenajus, the most learned, most judicious, 

and most illustrious of the early heads of the Church in GauL 

Originally from Asia Minor, probably from Smyrna, he had migrated 



26 History of France. 

to Gaul, at what particular date is not known, and had settled as a 
simple priest in the diocese of Lyons, where it was not long before 
ho exercised vast influence, as well on the spot as also during certain 
missions entrusted to him, and amongst them one, they say, to the 
Pope St. Eleutherius at Rome. Whilst Bishop of Lyons, from 
AD. 177 to 202, he employed the five and twenty years in propa- 
gating the Christian faith in Gaul, and in defending, by his writings, 
the Christian doctrines against the discord to which they had alreadj'' 
been subjected in the East, and which was beginning to penetrate to 
the West. In 202, during the persecution instituted by Septimius 
Severus, St. Irenseus crowned by martyrdom his active and influ- 
ential life. It was in his episcopate that there began what may be 
called the swarm of Christian missionaries, who, towards the end of 
the second and during the third centuries, spread over the whole 
of Gaul, preaching the faith and forming churches. Some went 
from Lyons at the instigation of St Irenseus ; others from Rome, 
especially under the pontificate of Pope St. Fabian, himself mar- 
tyred in 249 ; St. Felix and St. Fortunatus to Valence, St. Ferreol 
to Besan9on, Sfc. Marcellus to Chalons-sux-Saone, St. Benignus to 
Dijon, St. Trophimus to Aries, St. Paul to Narbonne, St. Saturninus 
to Toulouse, St. Martial to Limoges, St. Andeol and St. Privatus 
to the Cevennes, St. Austremoine to Clermont-Ferrand, St. Gatian. 
to Tours, St. Denis to Paris, and so many others that their names 
are scarcely known, beyond the pages of erudite historians, or the 
very spots where they preached, struggled, and conquered, often at 
the price of their lives. Such were the founders of the faith and of 
the Christian Church in France. At the commencement of the 
fourth century their work was, if not accomplished, at any rate 
triumphant ; and when, a.d. 312, Constantine declared himself a 
A.D. 312. Christian, he confirmed the fact of the conquest of the Roman 
Constan- -jvorld, and of Gaul in particular, by Christianity, No doubt the 
braces majority of the inhabitants were not as yet Christians ; but it was 
Christi- clear that the Christians were in the ascendant and had command 
^^^ y* of the future. Of the two grand elements which were to meet 
together, on the ruins of Roman society, for the formation of 
modern society, the moral element, the Christian religion, had 
already taken possession of souls ; the devastated territory awaited 
the coming of new peoples known to history under the general 
name of Germans, whom the Romans called the barbarians. 

About A.B. 241 or 242 the sixth Roman legion, commanded by 
Aarelian, at that time military tribune, and thirty years later 
emperor, had just finished a campaign on the Rhine, undertaken 
for the purpose of driving the Germans from Gaul, and was pre- 



Christianity in Gaul. 27 

paring for Eastern service, to make war on the Persians. The 
soldiers sang, — 

We have slain a thousand Franks and a thousand 
Sarmatians ; we want a thousand, thousand, 
Thousand Persians. 

It is the first time the name of Franks appears in history ; and AD. 241. 

it indicated no particular single people, but a confederation of *""^* *P 
^ o r r 7 ^ pearance 

Germanic peoplets, settled or roving on the right banlc of the of the 
E-hine, from the Mayn to the ocean. The number and the names Franks, 
of the tribes united in this confederation are uncertain. The tabula 
Peutingeri, bears, over a large territory on the right bank of the 
Rhine, the word Francia, and the following enumeration : — " The 
Chaucians, the Ampsiiarians, the Cheruscans, and the Chamavians, 
who are also called Franks ;" and to these tribes divers chroniclers 
added several others, " the Attuarians, the Bructerians, the Cattians, 
and the Sicambrians." Whatever may have been the specific 
names of these peoplets, they were all of German race, called them- 
selves Franks, that is " freemen," and made, sometimes separately, 
sometimes collectively, continued incursions into Gaul — especially 
Belgica and the northern portions of Lyonnes — at one time plun- 
dering and ravaging, at another occupying forcibly, or demanding 
of the Eoman emperors lands whereon to settle. From the middle 
of the third to the beginning of the fifth century the history 
of the Western empire presents an almost uninterrupted series 
of these invasions on the part of the Franks, together with the 
different relationships established between them and the Imperial 
Government. 

After the commencement of the fifth century, from a.d. 406 to AD. 406— 
409, it was no longer by incursions limited to certain points, and _ *^?- 
sometimes repelled with success, that the Germans harassed the of the 
Eoman provinces ; a veritable deluge of divers nations, forced one Barba- 
upon another, from Asia into Europe, by wars and migration in 
mass, iinmdated the empire and gave the decisive signal for its 
fall. Then took place throughout the Eoman empire, in the East 
as well as in the West, in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe, the 
last grand struggle between the Eoman armies and the barbarians, struggle 
It was in Gaul that it was most obstinate and most promptly ^^ ^^"ol. 
brought to a decisive issue, and the confusion there was as great as 
the obstinacy. Barbaric peoplets served in the ranks and barbaric 
leaders held the command of the Eoman armies : Stilicho was a 
Goth ; Arbogastes and Mellobaudes were Franks : Eicimer was a 
Suevian. The Eoman generals, Bonifacius, Aetius, ^gidius, 
Syagrius, at one time fought the barbarians, at another negotiated 



28 History of France. 

■with such and such of them, either to entice them to take service 
against other barbarians, or to promote the objects of personal 
ambition ; for the Eoman generals also, under the title of patrician, 
consul, or proconsul, aspired to and attained a sort of political 
independence, and contributed to the dismemberment of the empire 
in the very act of defending it. No later than a.d. 412 two 
German nations, the Visigoths and the Burgundians, took their 
stand definitely in Gaul, and founded there two new kingdoms : 
the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulph and Wallia, in Aquitania 
and Narbonness ; the Burgundians, under their kings Gundichaire 
and Gundioch, in Lj^onness, from the southern point of Alsatia 
right into Provence, along the two banks of the Saone and the left 
A.D. 451. hank of the Ehone, and also in Switzerland. In 451 the arrival in 
Attila and Gaul of the Huns and their king Attila gravely complicated the 

* ^^ ' situation. The common interest of resistance against the most 

barbarous of barbarians, and the renown and energy of the Eoman 
general Aetius, united, for the moment, the old and new masters 
of Gaul ; Eomans, Gauls, Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, Alans, 
Saxons, and Britons, formed the army led by Aetius against that 
of Attila, who also had in his ranks Goths, Burgundians, Gepidians, 
Alans, and beyond-Ehine Eranks, gathered together and enlisted 
on his road. Driven from Orleans, the Huns retired towards 
Champagne, which they had already crossed at their coming into 
Gaul, and arrived at the plains hard by Chalons-sur-Marne ; Aetius 
and all his allies had followed them ; and Attila, perceiving that 
A.T). 451. 3. battle was inevitable, halted in a position for delivering it. " It 
Battle of was," says the Gothic historian Jornandes, " a battle which for 

* **^^* atrocity, multitude, horror, and stubbornness has not the like in 

the records of antiquit3%" Historians vary in their exaggerations 
of the numbers engaged and killed : according to some, three 
hundred thousand, according to others, one hundred and sixty-two 
thousand were left on the field of battle. Theodoric, King of the 
Visigoths, was killed. The battle of Chalons drove the Huns out 
of Gaul, and was the last victory in Gaul, gained still in the name 
of the Eoman empire, but in reality for the advantage of the 
German nations Avhich had already conquered it. Twenty-four 
years afterwards the very name of Eoman empire disappeared with 
Augustulus, the last of the emperors of the West. 

Thirty years after the battle of Chalons the Franks settled in 
Gaul were not yet united as one nation ; the two principal Prankish 
tribes were those of the Salian Franks and the Eipuarian Franks, 
established, the latter in the east of Belgica, on the banks of the 
Moselle and the Ehinej the former, towards the west, between the 



Clovis, 29 

Meuse, the ocean, and the Somme. Meroveus, whose name was 
perpetuated in his line, was one of the principal chieftains of tho 
Salian Franks ; and his son Childeric, who resided at Tournay, 
where his tomb was discovered in 1655, was the father of Clovis, 
who succeeded him in 481, and with whom really commenced the 
kingdom and history of France. 

Clovis was fifteen or sixteen years old when he became King of A.D. 481. 
the Salian Franks of Tournky. Five years afterwards his ruling ^!°^^^'. . 
passion, ambition, exhibited itself, together with that mixture of Salian 
boldness and craft which was to characterize his whole life. He Franks, 
attacked first the Eoman patrician Syagrius, who was left master 
at Soissons after the death of his father j35gidius, and whom 
Gregory of Tours calls "King of the Eomans;" having put him 
to death, he settled himself at Soissons, and from thence set on 
foot, in the country between the Aisne and the Loire, plun- 
dering and subjugating expeditions which speedily increased 
his domains and wealth, and extended far and Avide his fame 
as well as his ambition. His marriage with Clotilde, niece of A.D. 493. 
Gondebaud, then King of the Burgundians (493) was, for the public ^^i:"*,^® 
of the period, for the barbarians and for the Gallo-Eomans, a great 
matter. Clovis and the Franks were still pagans ; Gondebaud and 
the Burgundians were Christians, but Arians ; Clotilde was a 
Catholic Christian. To which of the two. Catholics or Arians, 
would Clovis ally himself? To whom, Arian, pagan, or Catholic, 
would Clotilde be married % Assuredly the bishops, priests and all 
the Gallo-Eoman clergy, for the most part Catholics, desired to 
see Clovis, that young and audacious Frankish chieftain, take to 
wife a Catholic rather than an Arian or a pagan, and hoped to 
convert the pagan Clovis to Christianity much more than an Arian 
to orthodoxy. 

The consequences of the marriage justified before long the im- 
portance which had on all sides been attached to it. In 496 the 
Allemannians, a Germanic confederation like the Franks, who also 
had been, for some time past, assailing the Eoman empire on the 
banks of the Ehine or the frontiers of Switzerland, crossed the 
river, and invaded the settlements of the Franks on the left bank. 
Clovis went to the aid of his confederation and attacked the 
Allemannians at Tolbiac, near Cologne. He had with him Aurelian, a.D. 498. 
who had been his messenger to Clotilde, whom he had made Duke Battle of 
of Melun, and who commanded the forces of Sens. The battle 
was going ill ; the Franks were wavering and Clovis was anxious. 
Before setting out he had, it is said, promised his wife that if he 
were victorious he would turn Christian. Some chroniclers tell us 



30 History of France. 

that Aiirelian, seeing the battle in danger of being lost, said to 
Clovis, " My lord king, believe only on the Lord of heaven whom 
the queen, my mistress, preacheth." Clovis cried out with emotion, 
" Christ Jesus, Thou whom my queen Clotilde calleth the Son of 
the living God, I have invoked my own gods, and they have with- 
drawn from me ; I believe that they have no power since they 
aid not those Vi^ho call upon them. Thee, very God and Lord, I 
invoke ; if Thou give me victory over" these foes, if I find in Thee 
the power that the people proclaim of Thee, I will believe on Thee, 
and will be baptized in Thy name." The tide of battle turned : 
the Franks recovered confidence and courage ; and the Alleman- 
nians, beaten and seeing their king slain, surrendered themselves to 
Clovis, saying, " Cease, of thy grace, to cause any more of our 
people to perish ; for we are thine." 

The baptism of Clovis took place in the Cathedral of Eheims on 
Christmas Day, 496; " at the moment," says the historian Hincmar, 
" when the king bent his head over the fountain of life, * Lower thy 
head with humility, Sicambrian,' cried the eloquent bishop ; ' adore 

A.D. 496.' what thou hast burned : burn what thou hast adored.' The king's '^ 
dT'^^^""^ two sisters, Albofiede and Lantechilde, likewise received baptism ; 

tism of and so at the same time did three thousand of the Frankish army, 

Clovis. besides a large number of women and children." 

Clovis was not a man to omit turning his Catholic popularity to 
the account of his ambition. He learned that Gcndebaud, dis- 
quieted, no doubt, at the conversion of his powerful neighbour, had 
just made a vain attempt, at a conference held at Lyons, to recon- 

Clovis in- cile in his kingdom the Catholics and the Arians. Clovis considered 

ffundy " ^'^ moment favourable to his projects of aggrandizement at the 
expense of the Burgundian king; he fomented the dissensions 
which already prevailed between Gondel^aud and his brother 
Godegisile, assured to himself the latter's complicity, and suddenly 
entered Burgundy with his army. Gondebaud, betrayed and 
beaten at the first encounter at Dijon, fled to the south of his 
kingdom, and went and shut himself up in Avignon. Clovis 
pursued and besieged him there ; and having reduced him to the 
humble position of a tributary, he transferred to the Visigoths of 
Aquitania and their king, Alaric II., his views of conquest. He 

and Aqui- }iad there the same pretexts for attack and the same means of 
success. Alaric and his Yisigoths Avere Arians, and between 
them and the bishops of Southern Gaul, nearly all orthodox 
Catholics, there were permanent ill-will and distrust. In 507 
Clovis assembled his principal chieftains : and " It displeases me 
greatly," said he, " that these Arians should possess a portion of 



Clovis. 3 1 

the Gauls ; march we forth with the help of God, drive we them 
from that land, for it is very goodly, and bring we it under our 
own power. The Franks applauded their king ; and the army set 
out on the march in the direction of Poitiers, where Alaric 
happened at that time to be. The king of the Visigoths had 
prepared for the struggle ; and the two armies met in the plain of 
Vouille, on the banks of the little river Clain, a few leagues from 
Poitiers. The battle was very severe. " The Goths," says Gregory a.D. 507, 
of Tours, "fought with missiles; the Franks sword in hand, ^^^'^l® ®^ 
Clovis met and with his own hand slew Alaric in the fray." 

Beaten and kingless, the Goths retreated in great disorder ; and 
Clovis, pursuing his march, arrived without opposition at Bordeaux, 
where he settled down with his Franks for the winter. When the 
war-season returned, he marched on Toulouse, the capital of the 
Visigoths, which he likewise occupied without resistance, and 
where he seized a portion of the treasure of the Visigothic kings. 
He quitted it to lay siege to Carcassonne, which had been made by 
the Konians into the stronghold of Septimania. 

There his course of conquest was destined to end. After the 
battle of Vouille he had sent his eldest son Theodoric in command 
of a division, with orders to cross Central Gaul from west to east, 
to go and join the Burgundians of Gondebaud, who had promised 
his assistance, and in conjunction with them to attack the Visigoths 
on the banks of the Ehone and in Narbonness. The young Frank 
boldly executed his father's orders, but the intervention of Theodoric 
the Great, king of Italy, prevented the success of the operation. 
He sent an army into Gaal to the aid of his son-in-law Alaric ; 
and the united Franks and Burgundians failed in their attacks 
upon the Visigoths of the Eastern Provinces. Clovis had no idea 
of compromising by his obstinacy the conquests already accom- 
plished ; he therefore raised the siege of Carcassonne, returned 
first to Toulouse, and then to Bordeaux, took Angouleme, the only 
town of importance he did not possess in Aquitania ; and feeling 
reasonably sure that the Visigoths, who, even with the aid that 
had come from Italy, had great difficulty in defending what re- 
mained to them of Southern Gaul, would not come and dispute 
with him what he had already conquered, he halted at Tours, and 
stayed there some time, to enjoy on the very spot the fruits of his 
victory and to establish his power in his possessions. 

It appears that even the Britons of Armorica tendered to him at that 

... AD 6C9 

time, through the interposition of Melanius, Bishop of Rennes, if not ^{^^^ ^gl 

their actual submission, at any rate their subordination and homage, ceives the 

Clovis at the same time had his self-respect flattered in a 1"*!,' • _ 

andCoasal. 



32 History of France. 

manner to wliicli tarbaric conquerors always attach great im- 
portance. Anastasius, Emperor of the East, "vvith whom he 
had already had some communication, sent to him at Tours a 
Holemn embassy, bringing him the titles and insignia of Patrician 
and Consul. On leaving the city of Tours Clovis repaired to 
Paris, where he fixed the seat of his government. 

Paris was certainly the political centre of his dominions, the 

intermediate point between the early settlements of his race and 

himself in Gaul and his new Gallic conquests ; but he lacked some 

of the possessions nearest to him and most naturally, in his own 

opinion, his. To the east, north, and south-west of Paris were 

settled some independent Prankish tribes, governed by chieftains 

with the name of kings. So soon as he had settled at Paris, it 

"was the one fixed idea of Clovis to reduce them all to subjection. 

He had conquered the Eurgundians and the Yisigoths ; it remained 

for him to conquer and unite together all the Franks. The 

■*-^-^0®' barbarian showed himself in his true colours, during this new 

Sio-ebert enterprise, with his violence, his craft, his cruelty, and his perfidy. 

Chararic, He began with the most powerful of the tribes, the Eipuarian 

nacaireT' Franks ; then came the Franks of Terouanne, and Chararic their 

king ; Eagnacaire, king of the Franks of Cambria, was the third 

to be attacked ; finally, Rignomer, who ruled over the Franks of 

Le Mans, was put to death by the order of Clovis. So Clovis 

remained sole king of the Franks, for all the independent 

chieftains had disappeared. 

A.D. 511. In 511, the very year of his death, the last act of Clovis in life 

Death of ^^^^ ^j^g convocation at Orleans of a Council, which was attended 

by thirty bishops from the diff'orent parts of his kingdom, and at 

which were adopted thirty-one canons that, whilst granting to the 

Church great privileges and means of influence, in many cases 

favourable to humanity and respect for the right of individuals, 

bound the Church closely to the State, and gave to royalty, even 

in ecclesiastical matters, great power. The bishops, on breaking 

up, sent these canons to Clovis, praying him to give them the 

sanction of his adhesion, which he did. A few months afterwards, 

on the 27th of November, 511, Clovis died at Paris, and was 

buried in the church of St. Peter and St. Paul, now-a-days St. 

Genevieve, built by his wife, Queen Clotilde, who survived him. 

A.D. 511— From a.b. 511 to A.D. 752, that is, from the death of Clovis to 

Partition *^^ accession of the Carlovingians, is two hundred and forty-one 

of the Me- years, which was the duration of the dynasty of the Merovingians. 

rovingian J)^J.J^-,„ ^-^jg ^ime there reigned twenty-eight Merovingian kings, 

which reduces to eight years and seven months the average reign 



The Merovingian Dynasty. 3 3 

of each, a short duration compared with that of most of the 
royal dynasties. Five of these kings, Clotaire I., Clotaire II., 
Dagohert I., Thierry IV., and Childeric III. alone, at different 
intervals, united under their power all the dominions possessed by 
Clovis or his successors. The other kings of this line reigned only 
over special kingdoms, formed by virtue of divers partitions at the 
death of their general possessor. From ad. 511 to 638 five such 
partitions took place. In 511, after the death of Clovis, his 
dominions were divided amongst his four sons ; Theodoric, or 
Thierry L, was king of Metz ; Clodomir, of Orleans ; Childebert, 
of Paris ; Clotaire I., of Soissons. To each of these capitals fixed 
boundaries were attached. In 558, in consequence of divers 
incidents brought about naturally, or by violence, Clotaire I. ended 
by possessing alone, during three years, all the dominions of 
his fathers. At his death, in 561, they were partitioned afresh 
amongst his four sons ; Charibert was king of Paris ; Gontran, of 
Orleans and Burgundy ; Sigebert I., of Metz ; and Chilperic, of 
Soissons. In 567 Charibert, king of Paris, died without chil- 
dren, and a new. partition left only three kingdoms, Austra.sia, 
Jj^eustria, and Burgundy. Austrasia, in the East, extended over 
the two banks of the Ehine, and comprised, side by side with 
Eoman towns and districts, populations that had remained 
Germanic. Neustria, in the West, was essentially Gallo-Eoman, 
though it comprised in the north the old territory of the Salian 
Franks, on the borders of the Scheldt. Burgundy was the old 
kingdom of the Burgundians, enlarged in the north by some few 
counties. Paris, the residence of Clovis, was reserved and 
undivided amongst the three kings, kept as a sort of neutral city 
into which they could not enter without the common consent of 
all. In 613 new incidents connected with family matters placed A.D. 613. 
Clotaire II., son of Chilperic, and heretofore king of Soissons, in Clotaire II. 
possession of the three .kingdoms. He kept them united up to 
628, and left them so to his son Dagobert I., who remained in 
possession of them up to 638. At his death a new division of 
the Prankish dominions took place, no longer into three, but two 
kingdoms, Austrasia being one, and I^eustria and Burgundy the 
other. This was the definitive dismemberment of the great 
Prankish dominion to the time of its last two Merovingian kings, 
Thierry IV. and Childeric III., who were kings in name only, 
dragged from the cloister as ghosts from the tomb, to play a 
motionless part in the drama. For a long time past the real 
power had been in the hands of that valiant Austrasian family 

D 



34 



History of France. 



Southern 
Gaul 

strives to 
be inde- 
pendent. 



Character 
of the Me- 
rovingian 
kings. 



which was to furnish the dominions of Clovis with a new dynasty 
and a greater king than Clovis. 

Southern Gaul, that is to say, Aquitania, Vasconia, Narbonness, 
called Septimania, and the two banks of the Khone near its 
mouths, were not comprised in these partitions of the Frankish 
dominions. Each of the co-partiti oners assigned to themselves, to 
the south of the Garonne and on the coasts of the Mediterranean, 
in that beautiful region of old Eoman Gaul, such and such a 
district or such and such a town, just as heirs-at-law keep to 
themselves severally such and such a piece of furniture or such and 
such a valuable jewel out of a rich property to which they succeed, 
and which they divide amongst them. The peculiar situation of 
those provinces at their distance from the Franks' own settlements 
contributed much towards the independence which Southern Gaul, 
and especially Aquitania, was constantly striving and partly 
managed to recover. Amongst the various Frankish States, 
springing from a common base and subdivided between the 
different members of one and the same family, rivalries, enmities, 
hostile machinations, deeds of violence and atrocity, struggles, and 
wars soon became as frequent, as bloody, and as obstinate as they 
have ever been amongst states and sovereigns as unconnected as 
possible one with another. The Merovingian kings were as greedy 
and licentious as they were crueL '^ot only was pillage, in their 
estimation, the end and object of war, but they pillaged even in 
the midst of peace and in their own dominions ; sometimes after 
the Roman practice, by aggravation of taxes and fiscal manoeuvres, 
at others after the barbaric fashion, by sudden attacks on places 
and persons they knew to be rich. Treason, murder, and poisoning 
were the familiar processes of ambition, covetousness, hatred, 
vengeance and fear. Eight kings or royal heirs of the Merovingian 
line died of brutal murder or secret assassination, to say nothing of 
innumerable crimes of the same kind committed in their circle, 
and left unpunished, save by similar crimes. Nevertheless, 
justice is due to the very worst times and the very worst govern- 
ments ; and it must be recorded that, whilst sharing in many of 
the vices of their age and race, especially their extreme licence of 
morals, three of Clovis's successors, Theodebert, king of Austrasia 
(from 534 to 548), Gontran, king of Burgundy (from 561 to 593), 
and Dagobert I., who united under his own sway the whole 
Frankish monarchy (irom 622 to 638), were less violent, less 
cruel, less iniquitous, and less grossly ignorant or blind than the 
majority of the Merovingians. 



Dagobert I. 35 

The rivalry TDetween the two queens Fredegonde and Brunehaut 
occupies an important place in the history of the Merovingian 
epoch. After the execution of Brunehaut and the death of 
Clotaire II., the history of the Franks becomes a little less dark 
and less bloody. 

Despite of many excesses and scandals, Dagobert was the most A-D 628. 
wisely energetic, the least cruel in feeling, the most prudent in go^jfrt 
enterprise, and the most capable of governing with some little 
regularity and effectiveness, of all the kings furnished, since Clovis, 
by the Merovingian race. He had, on ascending the throne, 
this immense advantage, that the three Frankish dominions, 
Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy, were re-united under his 
sway ; and at the death of his brother Charibert he added thereto 
Aquitania. The unity of the vast Frankish monarchy was thus 
re-established, and Dagobert retained it by his moderation at 
home and abroad. Either by his own energy, or by surrounding 
himself with Mdse and influential counsellors, such as Pepin of 
Landen, mayor of the palace of Austrasia, St. Arnoul, bishop of 
Metz, St. Eligius, bishop of IToyon, and St. Audoenus, bishop of 
Eouen, he applied himself to, and succeeded in assuring to himself, 
in the exercise of his power, a pretty large measure of independence 
and popularity. At the beginning of his reign he held, in 
Austrasia and Burgundy, a sort of administrative and judicial 
inspection, halting at the principal towns, listening to complaints, 
and checking, sometimes with a rigour arbitrary indeed, but 
approved of by the people, the violence and irregularities of the 
grandees. JSTor did he confine himself to this unceremonious 
exercise of the royal authority. Some of his predecessors, and 
amongst them Childebert I., Clotaire I., and Clotaire II., had 
caused to be drawn up in Latin, and by scholars, digests more or 
less complete of the laws and customs handed down by tradition, 
amongst certain of the Germanic peoples established on Roman 
soil, notably the laws of the Salian Franks and Ripuarian Franks ; 
and Dagobert ordered a continuation of these first legislative 
labours amongst the new-born nations. It was, apparently, in 
his reign that a digest was made of the laws of the Allemannians 
and Bavarians. He had also some taste for the arts, and the pious 
talents displayed by Saints Eloi (Eligius) and Ouen (Audoenus) in 
goldsmiths'-work and sculpture, applied to the service of religion 
or the decoration of churches, received from him the support of the 
royal favour and munificence. His authority was maintained in his 
dominions, his reputation spread far and wide, and the name of 
great King Dagobert was his abiding title in the memory of the 

D 2 



26 History of France. 

people. Taken all in all, he was, next to Clevis, the most 
distinguished of Frankish kings, and the last really king in the 
^'^11^^ line of the Merovingians. After him, from 638 to 752, twelve 
Last lie- princes of this line, one named Sigehert, two Clovis, two Childeric, 
rovingian ^^^ Clotaire, two Dagobert, one Childebert, one Chilperic, and two 
iJigs. Theodoric or Thierry, bore in Neustria, Anstrasia, and Burgundy, 
or in the three kingdoms united, the title of king, without 
deserving in history more than room for their names. There was 
already heard the rumbling of great events to come around the 
Frankish dominion ; and in the very womb of this dominion was 
being formed a new race of kings more able to bear, in ac- 
cordance with the spirit and wants of their times, the burden of 
power. 
Mayors of The last of the kings sprung from Clovis acquitted themselves too 
the palace. -^ ^^ ^^^^ j,^ ^ ^f \ki&\Y task ; and the mayors of the palace were 
naturally summoned to supply their deficiencies, and to give the 
populations assurance of more intelligence and energy in the 
exercise of power. The origin and primitive character of these 
supplements of royalty were different according to circumstances ; 
some being appointed by the kings to support royalty against the 
" leudes " (lieges), others chosen by the " leudes " against the 
kings. It was especially between the ]M"eustrian and Austrasian 
mayors of the palace that this difference became striking. Gallo- 
Eoman feeling was more prevalent in Neustria, Germanic in 
Austrasia. The majority of the JSTeustrian mayors supported the 
interests of royalty, the Austrasian, those of the aristocracy of 
landholders and warriors. The last years of the Merovingian line 
were full of their struggles ; but a cause far more general and 
more powerful than these differences and conflicts in the very 
heart of the Frankish dominions determined the definitive fall of 
that line and the accession of another dynasty ; we allude to the 
great invasions of barbarians which took place during the sixth 
century. 
Power of Everywhere resistance to this new movement became the 
the Anstra- national attitude of the Franks, and they proudly proclaimed 
Franks. themselves the defenders of that West of which they had but 
lately been the conquerors. The ascendency in the , heart of the 
whole of Frankish Gaul thus passed to the Austrasians, already 
bound by their geographical position to the defence of their 
nation in its new settlement. There had risen up amongst them a 
family, powerful from its vast domains, from its military and 
political services, and already also from the prestige belonging to 
the hereditary transmission of name and power. Its first chief 



Pepin of Heristal. — Charles MarteL 37 

known in history had been Pepin of Landen, called The Ancient ; 
he died in 639, leaving to his family an intluence already 
extensive. His son Grimoald succeeded him as mayor of the . _ 

AT) fift7 

palace, ingloriously ; but his grandson, by his daughter Bega, Pepin of' 
Pepin of Heristal, was for twenty-seven years not only virtually, Heristal, 
as mayor of the palace, but ostensibly and with the title of duke, the palace, 
the real sovereign of Austrasia and all the Prankish dominion. 
He did not, however, take the name of king ; and four descendants 
of Clovis, Thierry III., Clovis III., Childebert III. and Dago- 
bert III. continued to bear that title in Neustria and Burgundy, 
under the preponderating influence of Pepin of Heristal. He did, 
during his long sway, three things of importance. He struggled 
without cessation to keep or bring back under the rule of the 
Franks the Germanic nations on the right bank of the RJiine, 
Prisons, Saxons, Thuringians, Bavarians, and Allemannians ; and 
thus to make the Prankish dominion a bulwark against the new 
flood of barbarians who were pressing one another westwards. 

He rekindled in Austrasia the national spirit and some political 
life by beginning again the old March-parades of the Pranks, 
which had fallen into desuetude under the last Merovingians. 
Pinally, and this was, perhaps, his most original merit, he under- 
stood of what importance, for the Prankish kingdom, was the 
conversion to Christianity of the Germanic peoples over the Ehine, 
and he abetted with all his might the zeal of the popes and 
missionaries, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and Gallo-Homan, devoted to 
this great work. 

On the death of Pepin (Dec. 16, 714), his son Charles, at that Charles 
time twenty-five years of age, was proclaimed Duke of Austrasia. 
He was destined to become Charles Martel. 

He first of all repelled an invasion of the Prisons and Saxons j 
turning then against the Neustrians, he twice succeeded in beat- 
ing, first near Cambrai, and then near Soissons (717-718), the 
Neustrian king and Ragenfried, the mayor of the palace, pursued 
them to Paris, and remaining temperate amidst the triumph of his 
ambition, he, too, took from amongst the surviving Merovingians a 
sluggard king, whom he installed under the name of Clotaire IV., 
himself becoming, with the simple title of Duke of Austrasia, 
master of the Prankish dominion. The invasions of the Arabs Invasions 
soon placed Aquitania and Vasconia within his grasp. Arabs. 

Elides or Eudon, duke of those beautiful provinces, had twice 
made a gallant efi'ort to stem the progress of the formidable 
soldiers of the Crescent ; at last he was obliged to seek assistance 
from the Pranks ; accordingly he repaired in all haste to Charles 



38 History of France. 

and invoked his aid against the common enemy, who, after having 
crushed the Aquitanians, would soon attack the Franks, and sub- 
ject them in turn to ravages and outrages. Charles did not 
require solicitation. He took an oath of the Duke of Aquitania 
to acknowledge his sovereignty and thenceforth remain faithful 
to him ; and then, summoning all his warriors, Franks, Bur- 
gundians, Gallo-Eomans, and Germans from beyond the Ehine, he 
set himself in motion towards the Loire. It was time. The 
Arabs had spread over the whole country between the Garonne 
and the Loire \ they had even crossed the latter river and pene- 
trated into Burgundy as far as Autnn and Sens, ravaging the 
country, the towns and the monasteries, and massacring or dis- 
persing the population. Abdel-Ehaman, their chief, had heard tell 
of the city of Tours and its rich abbey, the treasures whereof, it 
was said, surpassed those of any other city and any other abbey in 
Gaul. Burning to possess it, he recalled towards this point his 
scattei-ed forces. On arriving at Poitiers he found the gates closed 
and the inhabitants resolved to defend themselves ; and, after a 
fruitless attempt at assault, he continued his march towards Tours. 
He was already beneath the walls of the place when he learnt that 
the Franks were rapidly advancing in vast numbers. He fell back 
towards Poitiers, collecting the troops that were returning to him 
from all quarters, embarrassed with the immense booty they were 
dragging in their wake. He had for a moment, say the histo- 
rians, an idea of ordering his soldiers to leave or burn their booty ; 
to keep nothing but their arms, and think of nothing but battle ; 
however he did nothing of the kind, and, to await the Franks, he 
fixed his camp between the Vienne and the Clain, near Poitiers, not 
far from the spot where, two hundred and twenty- five years before, 
Clovis had beaten the Visigoths ; or, according to others, nearer 
Tours, at Mire, in a plain still called the Landes de Charlemagne. 
The Franks arrived. It was in the month of September or 
October, 732, and the two armies passed a week face to face, at 
one time remaining in their camps, at another deploying without 
attacking. It was a struggle between East and West, South and 
H'orth, Asia and Europe, the Gospel and the Koran ; and we now 
say, on a general consideration of events, peoples, and ages, that 
the civilization of the world depended upon it. At the breaking 
of the seventh or eighth day, Abdel-Ehaman, at the head of his 
cavalry, ordered a general attack ; and the Franks received it 
with serried ranks, astounding their enemies by their tall stature, 
stout armour, and their stern immobility. The Franks, finally, had 
the advantage; a great number of Arabs and Abdel-Ehaman 



Policy of Charles Martel. — His death. 39 

himself were slain. At the approach of night hoth armies retired 
to their camps. The next day, at dawn, the Franks moved out 
of theirs, to renew the engagement j the Arabs had decamped 
silently in the night, leaving the bulk of their booty, and by this 
precipitate retreat acknowledging a more severe defeat than they 
had really sustained in the fight. 

Foreseeing the effect which would be produced by their reverse 
in the country they had but lately traversed as conquerors, they 
halted nowhere, but hastened to re-enter Septimania and their 
stronghold Narbonne, where they might await reinforcements from 
Spain. Duke Eudes, on his side, after having, as vassal, taken the 
oath of allegiance to Charles, re-entered his dominions of Aqui- 
tania and Vasconia, and applied himself to the re-establishment 
there of security. 

The great Duke of Austrasia strengthened his power by occupy- Charles 
ing Burgundy and Provence ; he also took care to attract or retain ^^^^^ *„_ 
by rich presents, particularly by gifts of lands, the warriors, old wards the 
and new " leudes," who formed his strength. He therefore laid " ^®'^^®^» 
hands on a great number of the domains of the Church, and gave 
them, with the title of benefices, in temporary holding, often con- 
verted into proprietorship, and under the style of j?recarwMS tenure, 
to the chiefs in his service. There was nothing new in this ; the 
Merovingian kings and the mayors of the palace had more than 
once thus made free with ecclesiastical property ; but Charles 
Martel carried this practice much farther than his predecessors 
had. He did more ; he sometimes gave his warriors ecclesiastical 
offices and dignities. Whilst thus making use, at the expense of '^'^^ to- 
the Church and for political interests, of material force, Charles church 
Martel was far from misunderstanding her moral influence, and the 
need he had of her support at the very time when he was incurring 
her anathemas. Not content with defending Christianity against 
Islamism, he aided it against Paganism, by lending the Christian 
missionaries in Germany and the north-west of Europe, amongst 
others St. Willibrod and St. Boniface, the most effectual assistance. 
He also showed himself equally ready to protect, but with as much 
prudence as good-will, the head of the Christian Church (741) 
against the Lombards, the Pope's neighbours, who were threatening 
to besiege Rome ; he wished to do something in favour of the 
Papacy to show sincere good- will, without making his relations with 
useful allies subordinate to the desires of the Pope. 

Charles Martel had not time to carry out effectually with respect A.T). 741. 
to the Papacy this policy of protection and at the same time of in- g^* , °^ 
dependence; he died at the close of this same year, October 22, 741, Martel. 



40 History of France. 

at Kiersy-sur-Oise, aged fifty-two y^ars, and his last act was the 
least wise of his life. He had spent it entirely in two great 
works ; the re-estahlishment throughout the whole of Gaul of the 
Franco-Gallo-Roman empire, and the driving hack, from the fton- 
tiers of this empire, of the Germans in the north and the Arabs 
in the south. Tiie consequence, as also the condition, of this 
double success was tlie victory of Christianity over Paganism and 
Islamism. Charles Martel endangered these results by falling back 
into the groove of those Merovingian kings whose shadow he had 
allowed to remain on the throne. He divided between his two 
legitimate sons, Pepin, called the Short, from his small stature, and 
Carloman, this sole dominion which he had with so much toil 
reconstituted and defended. Pepin had Neustria, Burgundy, 
Provence, and the suzerainty of Aquitaine ; Carloman Austrasia, 
Thuringia, and AUemannia. They both, at their father's death, 
took only the title of mayor of the palace, and, perhaps of duke. 
The last but one of the Merovingians, Thierry IV., had died in 
737. For four years there had been no king at all. 

Brought up in the school and in the fear of their father, the two 
sons of Charles Martel, Pepin and Carloman, were inoculated with 
his ideas and example ; they remained united in spite of the 
division of dominions, and laboured together, successfully, to keep 
down, in the north the Saxons and Bavarians, in the south the 
Arabs and Aquitanians, supplying want of unity by union, and 
pursuing with one accord the constant aim of Charles Martel — 
abroad the security and grandeur of the Frankish dominion, at 
home the cohesion of aU its parts and the efficacy of its govern- 
ment. Events came to the aid of this wise conduct. Five years 
after the death of Charles Martel, in 746 in fact, Carloman, already 
weary of the burden of power, and seized with a fit of religious zeal, 
abdicated his share of sovereignty, left his dominions to his brother 
Pepin, had himself shorn by the hands of Pope Zachary, and with- 
drew into Italy to the monastery of Monte Cassino. 
Policy of Pepin, less enterprising than his father, but judicious, persever- 
Short. ^'^o ^^d capable of discerning what was at the same time necessary 
and possible, was well fitted to continue and consolidate what he 
would probably never have begun and created. Like his father, 
he, on arriving at power, showed pretensions to moderation, or, it 
might be said, modesty. He did not take the title of king ; and, 
in concert with his brother Carloman, he went to seek, heaven 
knows in what obscure asylum, a forgotten Merovingian, son of 
Chilperic II., the last but one of the sluggard kings, and made him 
king, the last of his line, with the title of Childeric III., himself, 



Pepin the Short, king of the Franks. 41 

as well as his brother, taking only the style of mayor of the palace. 
But at the end of ten years, and when he saw himself alone at the 
head of the Frankish dominion, Pepin considered the moment 
arrived for putting an end to this fiction. Having obtained the 
sanction of Pope Zachary in March, 752, in the presence and with 
the assent of the general assembly of " leudes " and bishops J^-?- '^^'^' 
gathered together at Soissons, he was proclaimed king of the claimed 
Franks, and received from the hand of St. Boniface the sacred king, 
anointment. They cut off the hair of the last Merovingian 
phantom, Childeric III., and put him away in the monastery of 
St. Sithiu, at St. Omer. The new Gallo-Frankish kingship and 
the Papacy, in the name of their common faith and common 
interests, thus contracted an intimate alliance. 

Pepin, after he had been proclaimed king and had settled 
matters with the Church as well as the warlike questions re- 
maining for him to solve permitted, directed all his efforts 
towards the two countries which, after his father's example, he 
longed to reunite to the Gallo-Frankish monarchy, that is, Septi- 
mania, still occupied by the Arabs, and Aquitaine, the independence 
of which was stoutly and ably defended by Duke Eudes' grandson, 
Duke "Waifre. The conquest of Septimania was rather tedious 
than difficult j in 759, after forty years' of Arab rule, it passed 
definitively under that of the Franks, who guaranteed to the 
inhabitants free enjoyment of their Gothic or Eoman law and of 
their local institutions. 

The conquest of Aquitaine and Yasconia was much more keenly 
disputed and for a much longer time uncertain ; it was only after 
nine years' war and seven campaigns full of vicissitudes that Pepin 
succeeded, not in conquering his enemy in a decisive battle, but in 
gaining over some servants who betrayed their master. In the 
month of July, 759, " Duke Waifre was slain by his own folk, by 
the king's advice," says Fredegaire ; and the conquest of all 
Southern Gaul carried the extent and power of the Gallo-Frankish 
monarchy farther and higher than it had ever yet been, even under 
Clovis. 

In 753 Pope Stephen, threatened bv Astolphus, king of the A.D. 754. 
Lombards, after vain attempts to obtain guarantees of peace, campaign 
repaired to Paris, and asked the assistance of Pepin and his in Italy, 
warriors. The Franks crossed the Alps with enthusiasm, succeeded 
in biiating the Lombards, and shut up in Pavia King Astolphus, 
who was eager to purchase peace at any price. He obtained it on 
two principal conditions : 1st, that he would not again make a 
hostile attack on Roman territory or wage war against the Pope or 



42 



History of France. 



AD. 768. 
Death of 
Pepin. 



his charac- 
ter. 



people of Eome ; 2nd, that he would hencefoilth recognize the 
sovereignly of the Franks, pay them tribute, and cede forthwith 
to Pepin the towns and all the lands, belonging/to the jurisdiction 
of the Roman empire, which were at that tinae occupied by the 
Lombards. By virtue of these conditions Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, 
that is to say, the Romagna, the Duchy of Uraino and a portion 
of the district of Ancona, were at once given/ up to Pepin, who, 
regarding them as his own direct conquest, the fruit of victory, 
disposed of them forthwith, in favour of the Popes, by that famous 
deed of gift which comprehended pretty nearly what has since 
formed the Roman States, and which founded the temporal inde- 
pendence of the Papacy, the guarantee of its pdependence in the 
exercise of the spiritual power. 

At the head of the Pranks, as mayor of the palace from 741, and 
as king from 752, Pepin had completed in France and extended in 
Italy the work which his father, Charles Martel, had begun and 
carried on, from 714 to 741, in State and Church. He left France 
re-united in one and placed at the head of Christian Europe. He 
died at the monastery of St. Denis, September 18, 768, leaving 
his kingdom and his dynasty thus ready to the hands of his son, 
whom history has dubbed Charlemagne^ 

Pepin the Short committed at his death the same mistake that 
his father, Charles Martel, had committed ; he divided his dominion 
between his two sons, Charles and Carloman, thus destroying again 
that unity of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy which his father and 
he had been at so much pains to establish. But, just as had already 
happened in 746 through the abdication of Pepin's brother, events 
discharged the duty of repairing the mistake of men. After the 
death of Pepin, and notwithstanding that of Duke Waifre, insur- 
rection broke out once more in Aquitaine; and the old duke, 
Hunald, issued from his monastery in the island of Rhe to try and 
recover power and independence. Charles " and Carloman marched 
against him ; but on the march Carloman, who was jealous and 
thoughtless, fell out with his brother, and suddenly quitted the 
expedition, taking away his troops. Charles was obliged to con- 
tinue it alone, which he did with complete success. At the end of 
this first campaign, Pepin's widow, the Queen-mother Bertha, 
reconciled her two sons ; but an unexpected incident, the death of 
Carloman two years afterwards, in 771, re-established unity more 
surely than the reconciliation had re-established harmony. 

The original and dominant characteristic of the hero of this 
reign, that which won for him and keeps for him after more than 
ten centuries the name of great, is the striking variety of his 



Charlemagne. — His wars against the Saxons. 43 

ambition, his faculties, and his deeds. Charlemagne aspired to, 

and attained to every sort of greatness, military greatness, political 

greatness, and intellectual greatness \ he was an able warrior, an 

energetic legislator, a hero of poetry. And he united, he displayed 

all these merits in a time of general and monotonous barbarism 

when, save in the Church, the minds of men were dull and barren. 

Those men, few in number, who made themselves a name at that 

epoch, rallied round Charlemagne and were developed under his 

patronage, 

A summary of the wars of Charlemagne will here suffice. From 

769 to 813, in Germany and Western and Northern Europe, 

Charlemagne conducted thirty-one campaigns against the Saxons, 

Frisons, Bavarians, Avars, Slavons, and Danes ; in Italy, five 

against the Lombards ; in Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia, twelve 

against the Arabs ; two against the Greeks ; and three in Gaul 

itself, against the Aquitanians and the Britons ; in all fifty-three 

expeditions ; amongst which those he undertook against the 

Saxons, the Lombards, and the Arabs were long and difficult wars. 

In 772, being left sole master of France after the death of liis ^^- 772— 

803 
brother Carloman, he convoked at Worms the general assembly -^^^3 * 

of the Franks, " and took," says Eginhard, " the resolution of against 
going and carrying war into Saxony. He invaded it without '•'^^S^^^'^S' 
delay, laid it waste with fire and sword, made himself master of 
the fort of Ehresburg, and threw down the idol that the Saxons 
called Irminsul." It was no longer the repression of Saxon 
invasions of France, but the conquest of Saxony by the Franks 
that was to be dealt with ; it was between the Christianity of the 
Franks and the national Paganism of the Saxons that the struggle 
was to take place. 

For thirty years such was its character. Charlemagne regarded 
the conquest of Saxony as indispensable for putting a stop to the 
incursions of the Saxons, and the conversion of the Saxons to 
Christianity as indispensable for assuring the conquest of Saxony. 
The principal events of the war may thus be summarily enu- 
merated : — Compulsory baptism of a large number of the Saxons 
who had been driven beyond the Weser (774) ; diet of Paderborn ; 
all the chiefs send in their submission except Wittikind (777) ; 
victories of Badenfeld and of Buckholtz (780) ; slaughter of 
4500 rebels at Yerden (782) ; submission of Wittikind, who 
embraced Christianity (785). The conqueror could only finish his 
work of subjection by removing forcibly from the country ten 
thousand families, which he disseminated throughout Brabant and 
Switzerland (803), 



44 



History of France. 



A.D. 773. 
Wars in 
Italy. 



A.D. 778. 
Charle- 
magae in 
Spain. 
Bonces- 
Talles. 



This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise at 
this epoch, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. Whilst 
he was incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of policy 
commenced by his father Pepin in Italy called for his care and his 
exertions. The new king of the Lombards, Didier, and the new 
Pope, Adrian I., had entered upon a new war ; and Didier was 
besieging Some, which was energetically defended by the Pope 
and its inhabitants. In 773 Adrian invoked the aid of the King 
of the Franks, who, after having married Desiree, the daughter of 
Didier, had repudiated her, and taken as his wife the Suabian 
Hildegarde. Charlemagne tried, by means of special envoys, to 
obtain from the king of the Lombards what the Pope demanded. 
On Didier's refusal he at once set to work, convoked the general 
meetings of the Franks, at Geneva, in the autumn of 773, gained 
them over, not without encountering some objections, to the pro- 
jected Italian expedition, and forthwith commenced the campaign 
with two armies. He finally took Pavia, where his father-in-law 
had shut himself up, received the submission of all the Lombard 
dukes and counts, save one only, Aregisius, duke of Beneventum, 
and entered France, leading with him, as prisoner, King Didier, 
whom he banished to a monastery, first at Liege and then at Corbie, 
where the dethroned Lombard, say the chroniclers, ended his 
days in saintly fashion. 

"Three years afterwards, in 777, the Saracen chief Ibnal- 
Arabi," says Eginhard, " came to Paderborn in Westphalia, to 
present himself before the king. He had arrived from Spain, 
together with other Saracens in his train, to surrender to the King 
of the Franks himself and aU the towns which the King of the 
Saracens had confided to his keeping." For a long time past the 
Christians of the West had given the Mussulmans, Arab or other, 
the name of Saracens. Ibn-al-Arabi was governor of Saragossa, 
and one of the Spanish- Arab chieftains in league against Abdel- 
Ehaman, the last offshoot of the Ommiad khalifs, who, with the 
assistance of the Berbers, had seized the government of Spain. 
Amidst the troubles of his country and his nation, Ibn-al-Arabi 
summoned to his aid, against Abdel-Ehaman, the Franks and the 
Christians. 

Charlemagne accepted the summons with alacrity. With the 
coming of spring in the following year, 778, and with the full 
assent of his chief warriors, he started on his march towards the 
Pyrenees. This expedition, however, begun under the most 
bvilliant and favourable auspices, came to a melancholy conclusion, 
the rear-guard of the Franks being cut to pieces in the passes of 



Result of Charlemagne^ s Campaign. 4 5 

Roncesvalles on their return home. This disaster, and the heroism 
of the warriors who perished there, became, in France, the ohject 
of popular sympathy, and the favourite topic for the exercise of 
the popular fancy. The Song of Roland, a real Homeric poem in. 
its great beauty, and yet rude and simple as became its national 
character, bears witness to the prolonged importance attained in 
Europe by this incident in the history of Charlemagne. Four 
centuries later the comrades of William the Conqueror, marching 
to battle at Hastings for the possession of England, struck up Tlie 
.Song of Roland " to prepare themselves for victory or death." 
There is no determining how far history must be made to par- 
ticipate in these reminiscences of national feeling ; but assuredly 
the figures of Eoland and Oliver, and Archbishop Turpin, and the 
pious, unsophisticated, and tender character of their heroism are 
not pure fables invented by the fancy of a poet, or the credulity of 
a monk. If the accuracy of historical narrative must not be looked 
for in them, their moral truth, must be recognized in their pourtrayal 
of a people and an age. 

Although continually obliged to watch, and often still to fight. Results of 
Charlemagne might well believe that he had nearly gained his Charle- 
end. He had everywhere greatly extended the frontiers of the wars. 
Frankish dominions, and subjugated the populations comprised in 
his conquests. He had proved that his new frontiers would be 
vigorously defended against new invasions or dangerous neighboiirs. 
He had pursued the Huns and the Slavqns to the confines of the 
empire of the East, and the Saracens to the islands of Corsica and 
Sardinia. The centre of the dominion was no longer in ancient 
Gaul ; he had transferred it to a point not far from the Ehine, in 
the midst and within reach of the Germanic populations, at the 
town of Aix-la-Chapelle, which he had founded, and which was 
liis favourite residence ; but the principal parts of the Gallo- 
Frankish kingdom, Austrasia, IS^eustria, and Burgundy were 
efi'ectually welded in one single mass. The moral influence of 
Charlemagne was on a par with his material power ; he had 
everywhere protected the missionaries of Christianity ; he had 
twice entered Rome, also in the character of protector, and he 
could count on the faithful support of the Pope at least as much as 
the Pope could count on him. He had received embassies and 
presents from the sovereigns of the East, Christian and Mussulman, 
from the emperors at Constantinople and the klialifs at Bagdad. 
Everywhere, in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, he was feared and 
respected by kings and people. Such, at the close of the eighth 
century were, so far as he was concerned, the result of his wars, 



46 



History of France. 



A D. 800. 

He is 

crowned 

emperor. 



Charle- 
magne's 
govern- 
meut. 



of the superior capacity he had displayed, and of the successes he 
had -won and kept. 

In 799 he received, at Aix-la-Chapelle, news of serious dis- 
turbances which had broken out at Rome ; he remained all the 
winter at Aix-la-Chapelle, spent the first months of the year 
800 on affairs connected with Western France ; then journeying 
towards Italy, he arrived on the 23rd of Kovember, 800, at the 
gates of Rome. The pope " received him there as he was dis- 
mounting ; then, the next day, standing on the steps of the basilica 
of St. Peter and amidst general hallelujahs, he introduced the 
king into the sanctuary of the blessed Apostle, glorifying and 
thanking the Lord for this happy event." Some days were spent 
in examining into the grievances which had been set down to the 
pope's account, and in receiving two monks arrived from Jerusalem 
to present to the king, with the patriarch's blessing, the keys of 
the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary, as well as the sacred standard. 
Lastly, on the 25th of December, 800, " the day of the Nativity 
of our Lord," says Eginhard, " the king came into the Basilica of 
the blessed St. Peter, apostle, to attend the celebration of mass. 
At the moment when, in his place before the altar, he was 
bowing down to pray. Pope Leo placed on his head a crown, and 
all the Eoman people shouted, ' Long life and victory to Charles 
Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the 
liomans ! ' After this proclamation the pontiff' prostrated himself 
before him and paid him adoration, according to the custom estab- 
lished in the days of the old emperors ; and thenceforward Charles, 
giving up the title of patrician, bore that of emperor and Augustus." 

It has just been shown how Charlemagne by his wars, which 
had for their object and result permanent and well- secured con- 
quests, had stopped the fresh incursions of barbarians, that is, had 
stopped disorder coming from without. An attempt wiU now be 
made to show by what means he set about suppressing disorder 
from within and putting his own rule in the place of the anarchy 
that prevailed in the Roman world which lay in ruins, and in the 
barbaric world which was a prey to blind and ill-regulated force. 

A distinction must be drawn between the local and central 
governments. 

Far from the centre of the State, in what have since been called 
the provinces, the power of the emperor was exercised by the 
medium of two classes of agents, one local and permanent, the 
other despatched from the centre and transitory. 

In the first class we find : — 

1st. The dukes, counts, vicars of counts, cent^niers, sheriffs 



Character of Charlemagne s government. 47 

(scaMni), oflBcers or magistrates residing on the spot, nominated 
by the emperor himself or by his delegates, and charged with the 
duty of acting in his name for the levying of troops, rendering of 
justice, maintenance of order, and receipt of imposts. 

2nd. The beneficiaries or vassals of the emperor, who held of 
him, sometimes as hereditaments, more often for life, and more often 
still without fixed rule or stipulation, lands ; domains, throughout 
the extent of which they exercised, a little bit in their own name 
and a little bit in the name of the emperor, a certain jurisdiction 
and nearly all the rights of sovereignty. There was nothing very 
fixed or clear in the position of the beneficiaries and in the nature 
of their power ; they were at one and the same time delegates and 
independent, owners and enjoyers of xisufruct, and the former or 
the latter character prevailed amongst them according to circum- 
stances. But, altogether, they were closely bound to Charlemagne, 
who, in a great number of cases, charged them with the execution 
of his orders in the lands they occupied. 

Above these agents, local and resident, magistrates or bene- «< Missi 
ficiaries, were the missi dominici, temporary commissioners, charged dominici'* 
to inspect, in the emperor's name, the condition of the provinces ; 
authorized to penetrate into the interior of the free lands as well 
as of the domains granted with the title of benefices ; having the 
right to reform certain abuses, and bound to render an account of 
all to their master. The missi dominici were the principal instru- 
ments Charlemagne had, throughout the vast territory of his 
empire, of order and administration. 

As to the central government, setting aside for a moment the General 
personal action of Charlemagne and of his counsellors, the general assemblies. 
assemblies, to judge by appearances and to believe nearly all the 
modern historians, occupied a prominent place in it. They were, 
in fact, during his reign, numerous and active ; from the year 776 
to the year 813 we may count thirty-five of these national assem- 
blies, March-parades and May-parades, held at Worms, Valen- 
ciennes, Geneva, Paderborn, Aix-la-Chapelle, Thionville, and several 
other towns, the majority situated round about the two banks 
of the Ehine. The number and periodical nature of these 
great political reunions are undoubtedly a noticeable fact. "What, 
went on in their midst? What character and weight must be 
then, attached to their intervention in the government of the 
State ] 

Two striking facts are to be gathered from contemporary docu- 
ments : the first, that the majority of the members composing tliese 
assemblies probably regarded as a burden the necessity for being 



48 History of France. 

present at them, since Charlemagne took care to explain their con- 
vocation by declaring to them the motive for it and by always 
giving them something to do ; the second, that the proposal of the 
capitularies, or, in modern phrase, the initiative proceeded from the 
emperor ; the figure of Charlemagne alone fills the picture — he is 
the centre-piece of it and the soul of every thing. 'Tis he who 
wills that the national assemblies should meet and deliberate ; 'tis 
he who inquires into the state of the country ; 'tis he who proposes 
and approves of, or rejects the law's ; with him rests will and 
motive, initiative and decision. He has a mind sufficiently judicious, 
unshackled, and elevated to understand that the nation ought not 
to be left in darkness about its aft'airs, and that he himself has 
need of communicating with it, of gathering information from it, 
and of learning its opinions. But we have here no exhibition of 
great political liberties, no people discussing its interests and its 
business, interfering efi'ectually in the adoption of resolutions, and, 
in fact, taking in its government so active and decisive a part as to 
have a right to say that it is self-governing, or, in other words, a 
free people. It is Charlemagne, and he alone who governs ; it is 
absolute government marked by prudence, ability, and grandeur. 

What he was in his wars and his general relations with his nation 
has just been seen ; he shall now be exhibited in all his adminis- 
trative activity and his intellectual life, as a legislator and as a 
friend to the human mind. The same man will be recognized in 
every case ; he will grow in greatness, without changing, as he 
appears under his various aspects. 

There are often joined together, under the title of Ccqntularies 
{capitula, small chapters, articles) a mass of Acts, very different in 
point of dates and objects, which are attributed indiscriminately to 
Charlemagne. This is a mistake. The Capitularies are the laws 
or legislative measures of the Frankish kings, Merovingian as well 
as Carlovingian, Those of the Merovingians are few in number 
and of slight importance, and amongst those of the Carlovingians, 
which amount to 152, 65 only are due to Charlemagne. "When an 
attempt is made to classify these last according to their object, it 
is impossible not to be struck with their incoherent variety ; and 
several of them are such as we should now-a-days be surprised to 
meet with in a code or in a special law. Amongst Charlemagne's 
65 Capitularies, which contain 1151 articles, may be counted 87 of 
moral, 293 of political, 130 of penal, 110 of civil, 85 of religious, 
305 of canonical, 73 of domestic, and 12 of incidental legislation. 
And it must not be supposed that all these articles are really acts 
of legislation, laws properly so called ; we find amongst them the 



Charlemagne a Legislator and a Scholar. 49 

texts of ancient national laws revised and promulgated afresh; 
extracts from and additions to these same ancient laws, Salic, Lom- 
bard, and Bavarian ; extracts from acts of councils ; instructions 
given by Charlemagne to his envoys in the provinces ; questions 
that he proposed to put to the bishops or counts when they came 
to the national assembly ; answers given by Charlemagne to ques- 
tions addressed to him by the bishops, counts, or commissioners 
(missi dominici) ; judgments, decrees, royal pardons, and simple 
notes that Charlemagne seems to have had written down for himself 
alone, to remind him of what he proposed to do ; in a word, nearly 
all the various acts which could possibly have to be framed by an 
earnest, far-sighted, and active government. 

It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitularies 
belong to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the 
"West, when he was invested with all the splendour of sovereign 
power. Of the 65 Capitularies classed under different heads, 13 
only are previous to the 25th of December, 800, the date of his 
coronation as emperor at Eome ; 52 are comprised between the 
years 801 and 804. 

The energy of Charlemagne as a warrior and a politician having Charle- 
thus been exhibited, it remains to say a few Avords about his intel [^!^nf„^ 
lectual energy. Por that is by no means the least original or least tual cha-. 
grand feature of his character and his influence. Those amongst '**''^'^' 
his habitual advisers whom he did not employ at a distance formed, • 
in his immediate neighbourhood, a learned and industrious society, 
a school of the palace, according to some modern commentators, 
but an academy and not a school, according to others, devoted rather 
to conversation than to teaching. It probably fulfilled both 
missions ; it attended Charlemagne at his various residences, at one 
time working for him at questions he invited them to deal with, 
at another giving to the regular components of his court, to his 
children and to himself, lessons in the different sciences called 
liberal, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, geometry, and even 
theology and the great religious problems it Avas beginning to 
discuss. Two men, Alcuin ^id Eginhard, have remained justly- 
celebrated in the literary history of the age. Alcuin was the 
principal director of the school of the palace, and the favourite, the 
confidant, the learned adviser of Charlemagne. " If your zeal were 
imitated," said he one day to the emperor, " perchance one might 
see arise in France a new Athens, far more glorious than the 
ancient — the Athens of Christ." Eginhard, who was younger, 
received his scientific education in the school of the palace, and 

B 



50 History of France. 

The school "^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ public works to Charlemagne, before becoming Ms 
of the biographer, and, at a later period, the intimate adviser of his son 
^ ^ ' Louis the Debonnair. Other scholars of the school of the palace, 
Angilbert, Leidrade, Adalhard, Agobard, Theodulph, were abbots 
of St. Eiquier or Corbie, archbishops of Lyons, and bishops of 
Orleans. They had all assumed, in the school itself, names iKus- 
trious in pagan antiquity; Alcuin called himself Flaccus; Angilbert, 
Homer; Theodulph, Pindar. Charlemagne himself had been 
pleased to take, in their society, a great name of old, borrowed 
from the history of the Hebrews— he called himself David; 
and Eginhard, animated, no doubt, by the same sentiments, was 
Bezaleel, that nephew of Moses to whom God had granted the 
gift of knowing how to work skilfully in wood and all the materials 
which served for the construction of the ark and the tabernacle. 
Either in the lifetime of their royal patron or after his death all 
these scholars became great dignitaries of the Church, or ended 
their lives in monasteries of note ; but, so long as they lived, they 
served Charlemagne or his sons not only with the devotion of 
faithful advisers, but also as followers proud of the master who had 
known how to do them honour by making use of them. 

It was without effort and by natural sympathy that Charlemagne 
had inspired them with such sentiments ; for he too really loved 
sciences, literature, and such studies as were then possible, and he 
cultivated them on his own account and for his own pleasure, as a 
sort of conquest. He caused to be commenced, and, perhaps, 
himself commenced the drawing up of the first Germanic grammar. 
He ordered that the old barbaric poems, in which the deeds and 
wars of the ancient kings were celebrated, should be collected for 
posterity. He gave Germanic names to the twelve months of the 
year. He distinguished the winds by twelve special terms, whereas 
before his time they had but four designations. He paid great 
attention to astronomy. In theological studies and discussions he 
exhibited a particular and grave interest ; he also paid zealous at- 
tention to the instruction of the clergy, whose ignorance he deplored; 
lie laid the foundation, in the cathedral churches and the great 
monasteries, of episcopal and cloistral schools for the education of 
ecclesiastics, and, carrying his solicitude still farther, he recom- 
mended to the bishops and abbots that, in those schools, "they 
should take care to make no difference between the sons of serfs 
and of free men, so that they might come and sit on the same 
benches to study grammar, music, and arithmetic " [Capitularies of 
789, art. 70]. Thus, in the eighth century, he foreshadowed the 



Death of Charlemagne, 



SI 



extension which, in the nineteenth, was to he accorded to primary 
instruction, to the advantage and honour not only of the clergy, 
but also of the whole people. 

Charlemagne died at Aix-la-Chapelle, on Saturday, the 28th of A.D. 814. 
January, 814, in his seventy-first year. If we sum up his designs pJf^*?^ °^ 
and his achievements, we find an admirably sound idea and a vain magne. 
dream, a great success and a great failure. He took in hand the 
work of placing upon a solid foundation the Frankish Christian ^ 

dominion by stopping, in the north and south, the flood of bar- 
barians and Arabs, Paganism and Islamism. In that he succeeded: 
the inundations of Asiatic populations spent their force in vain 
against the Gallic frontier. Western and Christian Europe was 
placed, territorially, beyond reach of attacks from the foreigner and 
infidel. 1S.0 sovereign, no human being, perhaps, ever rendered 
greater service to the civilization of the world. 

Charlemagne formed another conception and made another at- 
tempt. Like more than one great barbaric warrior, he admired the 
Roman empire that had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its 
powerful organization, under the hand of a single master. He 
thought he could resuscitate it, durably, through the victory of a 
new people and a new faith, by the hand of Franks and Christians. 
With tliis view he laboured to conquer, convert, and govern. He 
tried to be at one and the same time Ctesar, Augustus, and Con- 
stantine. And for a moment he appeared to have succeeded ; but 
the appearance passed away with himself. The unity of the em- 
pire and the absolute power of the emperor were buried in his 
grave. The Christian religion and human liberty set to work to 
prepare for Europe other governments and other destinies. 




E 2 




CHAPTER III. 



The North- 

men. 
Hastings. 



THE CARLOVINGIANS — FEUDAL FRANCE — THE CRUSADES. 

From the death of Charlemagne to the accession of Hugh Capet, 
that is, from 814 to 987, thirteen kings sat upon the throne of 
France. What then became, under their reign, and in the course 
of those hundred and seventy-three years, of the two great facts 
which swayed the mind and occupied the life of Charlemagne 1 
What became, that is, of the solid territorial foundation of tlie 
kingdom of Christian France through efficient repression of 
foreign invasion, and of the unity of that vast empire wherein 
Charlemagne had attempted and hoped to resuscitate the Eoman 
empire 1 

The fate of those two facts is the very history of France under 
the Carlovingian dynasty ; it is the only portion of the events of 
that epoch which still deserves attention now-a-days, for it is the 
only one which has exercised any great and lasting influence on 
the general history of France. 

Attempts ^t foreign invasion of France were renewed very often ; 
it were tedious to relate or even enumerate all the incursions of 
the Northmen, with their monotonous incidents. When their 
frequency and their general character has been notified, all has been 
done that is due to them from history. However, there are three 
on which it may be worth while to dwell particularly, by reason of 
their grave historical consequences, as well as of the dramatic 
details which have been transmitted to us about them. 



The Carlovingiafts. 53 

In the middle and during the last half of the ninth century, a 
chief of the l^orthmen, named Hastenc or Hastings, appeared 
several times over on the coasts and in the rivers of France, with 
numerous vessels. He penetrated into the interior of the country 
in Poitou, Anjou, Brittany, and along the Seine ; pillaged the 
monasteries of Jumieges, St. Vandrille, and St. Evroul ; took 
possession of Chartres and appeared before Paris, where Charles the 
Bald, entrenched at St. Denis, was deliberating with his prelates 
and barons as to how he might resist the ITorthmen or treat with 
them. " After long parley with the Abbot of St. Denis," says a 
Chronicle, " and by reason of large gifts and promises," Hastings 
consented to stop his cruisings, to become a Cliristian, and to settle 
in the countship of Chartres, "which the king gave him as an 
hereditary possession, with all its appurtenances." According to 
other accounts, it was only some years later, under the young king 
Louis III., grandson of Charles the Bald, that Hastings was induced, 
either by reverses or by payment of money, to cease from his piracies 
and accept in recompense the countship of Chartres. Whatever 
may have been the date, he was, it is believed, the first chieftain 
of the J^orthmen who renounced a life of adventure and plunder, 
to become, in France, a great landed proprietor and a count of the 
king's. 

In N"ovember, 885, under the reign of Charles the Fat, after A.T). 885. 
having, for more than forty years, irregularly ravaged France, the 
Northmen resolved to unite their forces m order at length to obtain 
possession of Paris, whose outskirts they had so often pillaged 
without having been able to enter the heart of the place, in the 
He de la Cite, which had originally been and still was the real 
Paris. 

The siege was prolonged throughout the summer ; and when, in 
November, 886, Charles the Fat at last appeared before Paris, 
" with a large army of all nations," it was to purchase the retreat 
of the Northmen at the cost of a heavy ransom, and by allowing 
them to go and winter in Burgundy, " whereof the inhabitants 
obeyed not the emperor." 

Some months afterwards, in 887, Charles the Fat Avas deposed, 
at a diet held on the banks of the Ehine, by the grandees of 
Germanic France ; and Arnulf, a natural son of Carloman, the 
brother of Louis III., was proclaimed emperor in his stead. At 
the same time Count Eudes, the gallant defender of Paris, was 
elected king at Compiegne and crowned by the Archbishop of 
Sens. Guy, duke of Spoleto, descended from Charlemagne in the 
female line, hastened to France, and was declared king at Langres 



Siege of 
Paris. 



54 History of France. 

by the bisliop of that town, but returned with precipitation to 
Italy, seeing no chance of maintaining himself in his French king- 
ship. Elsewhere, Boso, duke of iirles, became king of Provence, 
and the Burgundian Count Rodolph had himself crowned at 
St. Maurice, in the Valais, king of Trans-juran Burgundy. There 
was still in France a legitimate Carlovingian, a son of Louis the 
Stutterer, who was hereafter to become Charles the Simple ; but 
being only a child, he had been rejected or completely forgotten, 
and, in the interval that was to elapse ere his time should arrive, 
kings were being made in all directions. 

In the midst of this confusion, the Northmen, though they kept 
at a distance from Paris, pursued in Western France their cruising 
and plundering. In Eollo they had a chieftain far superior to his 
vagabond predecessors. 

When, in 898, Eudes was dead, and Charles the Simple, at 
hardly nineteen years of age, had been recognized sole king of 
France, the ascendency of Eollo became such that the necessity of 
treating with him was clear. In 9 1 1 Charles, by the advice of his 
councillors, and, amongst them, of Eobert, brother of the late king 
Eudes, who had himself become Count of Paris and Duke of 
France, sent to the chieftain of the Northmen Franco, archbishop 
of Eoueii, with orders to offer him the cession of a considerable 
portion of Neustria and the hand of his young daughter Gisele, on 
condition that he became a Christian, and acknowledged himself 
the king's vassal. The treaty Avas made at St. Clair-sur-Epte ; 
henceforth the vagabond pirates had a country to cultivate aud 
defend ; the Northmen were becoming French. 

The invasions of the Saracens in the south of France were still 
continued from time to time ; but they did not threaten, as those of 
the Northmen did in the north, the security of the Gallo-Frankish 
monarchy, and the Gallo-Eoman populations of the south were able 
to defend their national independence at the same time against th6 
Saracens and the Franks. They did so successfully in the ninth 
and tenth centuries ; and the French monarchy, which was being 
founded between the Loire and the Ehine, had thus for some time 
a breach in it without ever suffering serious displacement. The 
first of Charlemagne's grand designs, however, the territorial 
security of the Gallo-Frankish and Christian dominion, was accom- 
plished. In the east and the north, the Germanic and Asiatic 
populations, which had so long upset it, were partly arrested at its 
frontiers, partly incorporated regularly in its midst. In the south 
the Mussulman populations, which in the eighth century had 
appeared so near overwhelming it, were powerless to deal it any 



Louis the Debonnair. 55 

heavy TdIow. Substantially France was founded. But what had 
become of Charlemagne's second grand design, the resuscitation of 
the Roman empire at the hands of the barbarians that had con- 
quered it and become Christians % When Louis the Debonnair a.D. 814. 
became emperor, he began his reign by a reaction against the ^°^^^ *^® 
excesses, real or supposed, of the preceding reign ; he established 
at his court, for his sisters as well as his servants, austere regu- 
lations. He restored to the subjugatftd Saxons certain of the 
rights of which Charlemagne had deprived them. He sent out 
every where his commissioners {missi dominiGi) with orders to listen 
to complaints and redress grievances, and to mitigate his father's 
rule, which was rigorous in its application and yet insufficient to 
repress disturbance, notwithstanding its preventive purpose and its 
watchful supervision. 

In 817 Louis summoned at Aix-la-Chapelle the general assembly 
of his dominions ; and there, whilst declaring that " neither to 
those who were wisely-minded, nor to himself, did it appear ex- 
pedient to break up, for the love he bare his sons, and by the will 
of man, the unity of the empire, preserved by God himself," he had 
resolved to share with his eldest son, Lothaire, the imperial throne. 
Lothaire was in fact crowned emperor ; and his two brothers, Pepin 
and Louis, were crowned king ; Pepin, over Aquitaine and a great 
part of Southern Gaul and of Burgundy ; Louis, beyond the Ehine, 
over Bavaria, and the divv;rs peoplets in the east of Germany." 
The rest of Gaul and of Germany, as well as the kingdom of Italy, 
was to belong to Lothaire, emperor and head of the Prankish 
monarchy, to whom his brothers would have to repair year by year 
to come to an understanding with him and receive his instructions. 

Several insurrections burst out in the empire ; the first amongst jng^rrec- 
the Basques of Aquitaine; the next in Italy, where Bernard, son tions. 
of Pepin, having, after his father's death, become king in 812, with 
the consent of his grandfather Charlemagne, could not quietly 
see his kingdom pass into the hands of his cousin Lothaire, at 
the orders of his uncle Louis. These two attempts were easily 
repressed, but the third was more serious. It took place in 
Brittany amongst those populations of Armorica who were ex- 
cessively jealous of their independence, and was quelled with con- 
siderable difficulty. 

After the death of Herman garde, his first wife, Louis had 
married Judith, daughter of Count Welf (Guelf) of Bavaria. In 
823 he had, by her, a son, whom he called Charles, and who was 
hereafter to be known as Charles the Bald. This son became his 
mother's ruling, if not exclusive passion, and the source of his 



56 History of France. 

father's woes. In 829, during an assembly lield at Worms, Louis, 
yielding to Judith's entreaties, set at naught the solemn act 
whereby, in 817, he had shared his dominions amongst his three 
elder sons ; and took away from two of them, in Burgundy and 
AUemannia, some of the territories he had assigned to them, and 
gave them to the boy Charles for his share. Lothaire, Pepin, and 
Louis thereupon revolted. Court intrigues were added to family 
differences; for ten years iBcenes of disorder kept repeating them- 
selves again and again ; rivalries and secret plots began once more 
between the three victorious brothers and their partisans ; popular 
teeling revived in favour of Louis ; a large portion of the clergy 
shared it ; finally, in 834, two assemblies, one meeting at St. Denis 
and the other at Thionville, once more put Louis in possession of 
the imperial title and power. He displayed no violence in his 
use of it ; but he was growing more and more irresolute and weak, 
when, in 838, the second of his rebellious sons, Pepin, king of 
Aquitaine, died suddenly, Louis, ever under the sway of Judith, 
speedily convoked at Worms, in 839, once more and for the last 
time, a general asse>nbly, whereat, leaving his son Louis of Bavaria 
reduced to his kingdom in eastern Europe, he divided the rest of 
his dominions into two nearly equal parts, separated by the course 
of the Meuse and the Rhone. Between these two parts he left the 
choice to Lothaire, who took the eastern portion, promising at the 
same time to guarantee the western portion to his younger brother 
Charles. Louis the Germanic protested against this partition, and 
took up arms to resist it. His father, the emperor, set himself in 
motion towards the Ehine, to reduce him to submission ; but on 
A.D. 840, arriving close to Mayence he caught a violent fever, and died on 
Death of the 20th of June, 840, at the castle of Ingelheim, on a little island 
Dtbonnair. ^^^ '^^ river. His last acts were a fresh proof of his goodness 
towards even his rebellious sons, and of his solicitude for his 
last-born. He sent to Louis the Germanic his pardon, and to 
Lothaire the golden crown and sword, at the same time bidding 
him fulfil his father's wishes on behalf of Charles and Judith. 
A D 843 Charles the Bald was to succeed, Lothaire retaining the imperial 
Council of dignity ; as a matter of fact the three sons equally aspired to the 
Verdun. throne. Charles and Louis having united for the purpose of 
resisting the ambition of their elder brother, defeated him in a 
terrible battle near the village of Fontenailles, six leagues from 
Auxerre. The Austrasian influence, till then triumphant in Gaul, 
perished there for ever (841). The victorious princes subsequently 
confirmed their union by what is generally called the oaths of Stras- 
hurg, a document regarded as the qldest specimen of the French 



Fall of the Carlovmgians. 57 

languaga Finally, in August, 843, the three brothers assemhling 
with their umpires, at Verdun, they at last came to an agreement 
about the partition of the Frankish empire, save the three countries 
which it had been beforehand agreed to except. Louis kept all the 
provinces of Germany of which he was already in possession, and 
received besides, on the left bank of the Ehine, the towns of 
Mayence, Worms, and Spire, with the territory appertaining to 
them. Lothaire, for his part, had the eastern belt of Gaul, 
bounded on one side by the Ehine and the Alps, on the other, by 
the courses of the Meuse, the Saone, and the Ehone, starting from Diyigi^Q 
the confluence of the two latter rivers, and, further, the country of the Em 
comprised between the Meuse and the Scheldt, together with P^^®* 
certain count-ships lying to the west of that river. To Charles 
fell all the rest of Gaul ; Vasconia or Biscaj'^e, Septimania, the 
Marches of Spain, beyond the Pyrenees, and the other countries of 
Southern Gaul which had enjoyed hitherto, under the title of the 
Kingdom of Aquitaine, a special government, subordinated to the 
general government of the empire, but distinct from it, lost this 
last remnant of their GalloEoman nationality, and became inte- 
gral portions of Frankish Gaul, which fell by partition to Charles 
the Bald, and formed one and the same kingdom under oiae and 
the same king. 

Thus fell through and disappeared, in 843, by virtue of the 
treaty of Verdun, the second of Charlemagne's grand designs, the 
resuscitation of the Eoman empire by means of the Frankish and 
Christian masters of Gaul. The name of emperor still retained a 
certain value in the minds of the people and still remained an 
object of ambition to princes; but the empire was completely 
abolished, and, in its stead, sprang up three kingdoms, independent 
one of another, without any necessary connexion or relation. One 
of the three was thenceforth France. 

Xone of Charlemagne's successors was capable of exercising on j-^jj ^j ^.jj, 
the events of his time, by virtue of his brain and hio own will, any Carlovin- 
notable influence. jSTot that they were all unintelligent, or timid, S^^°'- 
or indolent. It has been seen that Louis the Debonnair did not 
lack virtues and good intentions ; and Charles the Bald was clear- 
sighted, dexterous, and energetic : he had a taste for information 
and intellectual distinction ; he liked and sheltered men of 
learning and letters, and to such purpose that, instead of speaking, 
as under Charlemagne, of the school of the palace, people called the 
palace of Charles the Bald the palace of the school. Amongs't the 
eleven kings who after him ascended the Carlovingian throne, 
several, such as Louis IIL and Carloman, and especially Louis 



58 History of France. 

the TJltramarins (d'Outremer) and Lothaire, displayed, on several 
occasions, energy and coinage ; and the kiugs elected at this 
epoch, without the pale of the Carlovingian dynasty, Eudes in 887 
and Eaoul in 923, gave proofs of a valour hoth discreet and 
effectual. The Carlovingians did not, as the Merovingians did, 
end in monkish retirement or shameful inactivity : even the last 
of them, and the only on-i termed sluggard, Louis V., was getting 
ready, when he died, for an expedition in Spain against the 
Saracens. The truth is that, mediocre or undecided or addle-pated 
as they may have been, they all succumbed, internally and exter- 
nally, without initiating, and without resisting, to the course of 
events, and that, in 987, the fall of the Carlovingian line was the 
naturally and easily accomplished consequence of the new social 
condition which had been preparing in France under the empire. 
Brea^in? Twenty-nine years after the death of Charlemagne, that is, in 
up of the 843, when, by the treaty of Verdun, the sons of Louis of De- 
the*West honnair had divided amongst them his dominions, the great 
empire split up into three distinct and independent kingdoms, the 
kingdoms of Italy, Germany, and France. The splits did not stop 
there. Forty-five years later, at the end of the ninth century, 
shortly after the death of Charles the Fat, the last of the Carlo- 
vingians who appears to have re-united for a while all the empire 
of Charlemagne, this empire had begotten seven instead of three 
kingdoms, those of France, of Navarre, of Provence or Cis-juran 
Burgundy, of Trans-juran Burgundy, of Lorraine, of Allemannia, 
and of Italy. 

The same work was going on in France. About the end of the 
ninth century there were already twenty-nine provinces or 
fragments of provinces which had become petty states, the former 
governors of which, under the names of dukes, counts, marquises, 
and viscounts, were pretty nearly real sovereigns. Twenty-nine 
great fiefs, which have played a special part in French history, 
date back to this epoch. 

From the end of the ninth pass we to the end of the tenth 
century, to the epoch when the Capetians take the place of the 
Carlovingians. Instead of seven kingdoms to replace the empire of 
Charlemagne, there were then no more than four. The kingdoms 
of Provence and Trans-juran Burgundy had formed, by reunion, 
the kingdom of Aries. The kingdom of Lorraine was no more 
than a duchy in dispute between Allemannia and France. The 
Emperor Otho the Great had united the kingdom of Italy to the 
empire of Allemannia. Overtures had produced their effects amongst 
the great states ; but in the interior of the kingdom of France dis- 



Feudal France. 59 

memberment lias held on its course ; and instead of the twenty-nine 
petty states or great fiefs observable at the end of the ninth century, 
we find, at the end of the tenth, fifty-five actually established. 

Two causes, perfectly natural and independent of all human 
calculation, led to this dismemberment, one moral and the other 
political. They w^ere the absence from the minds of men of any 
general and dominant idea ; and the reflux, in social relations and 
manners, of the individual liberties but lately repressed or regu- 
lated by the strong hand of Charlemagne. In the ninth and 
tenth centuries there was no general and fructifying idea, save the 
. Christian creed ; no great intellectual vent ; no great national 
feeling ; no easy and rapid means of communication ; mind and 
life were both confined in a narrow space, and encountered, at 
every step, stoppages and obstacles well nigh insurmountable. At 
the same time, by the fall of the empires of Eome and of Charle- 
magne, men regained possession of the rough and ready individual 
liberties which were the essential characteristic of Germanic 
manners : thus, settled upon a soil conquered by themselves, and 
partitioned amongst themselves, lived each by himself, master of 
himself and all that was his, family, servitors, husbandmen, and 
slaves: the territorial domain became the fatherland, and the 
owner remained a free man, a local and independent chieftain, at 
his own risk and peril. 

The consequences of such a state of things and of such a dis- Rise of the 
position of persons were rapidly developed. Territorial ownership ^gjj^_ 
became the fundamental characteristic of and warranty for inde- 
pendence and social importance. Local sovereignty, if not complete 
and absolute, at least in respect of its principal rights, right of 
niaking war, right of judicature, right of taxation, and right of 
regulating the police, became one with the territorial ownership, 
which before long grew to be hereditary, whether, under the title 
of alien {allodium), it had been originally perfectly independent 
and exempt from any feudal tie, or under the title of benefice, had 
arisen from grants of land made by the chieftain to his followers, 
on condition of certain obligations. The offices, that is, the 
divers functions, military or civil, conferred by the king on his 
lieges, also ended by becoming hereditary. Having become esta- 
blished in fact, this heirship in lands and local powers was soon 
recognized by the law ; from the ninth to the tenth century it had 
acquired full force. 

Now go back to any portion of French history, and stop where 
you will, and you will everywhere find the ieudal system con- 
sidered, by the mass of the population, a foe to be fought, and 



6o History of France. 

fouglit down at any price. At all times, whoever dealt it a blow 
has been popular in France. 
Its poli- The reason for this fact is in the political character of feudalism : 
racter. ^^ ^^^^ ^ confederation of petty sovereigns, of petty despots, 
unequal amongst themselves, and having, one towards another, 
certain duties and rights, but invested in their own domains, over 
their personal and direct subjects, with arbitrary and absolute 
power. That is the essential element of the feudal system ; therein 
it differs from every other aristocracy, every other form of 
government. Liberty, equality, and tranquillity were all alike 
wanting, from the tenth to the thirteenth century, to the in- 
habitants of each lord's domains ; their sovereign was at their 
very doors, and none of them was hidden from him or beyond 
reach of his mighty arm ; there was despotism just as in pure 
monarchies, and there was privilege just as in the very closest 
aristocracies. And both obtruded themselves in the most offensive 
and, so to speak, crude form. Despotism was not tapered off by 
means of the distance and elevation of a tlirone ; and privilege did 
not veil itself behind the majesty of a large body. Both were the 
appurtenances of an individual ever present and ever alone, ever 
at his subjects' doors, and never called upon, in dealing with their 
lot, to gather his peers around him. 
Eelations And now we will leave the subjects in the case of feudalism, and 

. ° consider the masters, the owners of fiefs, and their relations one 

Darons one . .' 

•with with another. We here behold quite a different spectacle ; we see 

another, liberties, rights, and guarantees, which not only give protection 
and honour to those who enjoy them, but of which the tendency 
and effect are to open to the subject population an outlet towards 
a better future. The grandeur of the system was neither dazzling 
nor unapproachable ; it Avas but a short step from vassal to 
suzerain ; they lived familiarly one with another, without any 
possibility that superiority should think itself illimitable, or sub- 
ordination think itself servile. Thence came that extension of 
the domestic circle, that ennoblement of personal service, from 
which sprang one of the most generous sentiments of the middle 
ages, fealty, which reconciled the dignity of the man with the 
devotion of the vassal. It was, as it were, a people consisting of 
scattered citizens, of whom each, ever armed, accompanied by his 
following, or intrenched in his castle, kept watch himself over his 
own safety and his own rights, relying far more on his own 
courage and his OAvn renown than on the protection of the public 
authorities. Such a condition bears less resemblance to an 
organized and settled society than to a constant prospect of peril 



Feudal France. 6 1 

and war : but tlie energy and the dignity of the individual were 

kept up in it, and a more extended and better regulated society 

might issue therefrom. 

And it did issue. The society of the future was not slow Feuialism 

attacked 
to sprout and grow in the midst of that feudal system so 

turbulent, so oppressive, so detested. iN'o sooner was the feudal 
system in force, than, with its victory scarcely secured, it 
was attacked in the lower grades by the mass of the people 
attempting to regain certain liberties, ownerships and rights, 
and in the highest by royalty labouring to recover its public 
character, to become once more the head of a nation ; in spite of 
the servitude into which the people had sunk at the end of the 
tenth century, from this moment the enfranchisement of the people 
makes way. In spite of the weakness, or rather nullity of the 
regal power at the same epoch, from this moment the regal power 
begins to gain ground. That monarchial system which the genius 
of Charlemagne could not found, kings far inferior to Charlemagne 
will little by little make triumphant. Those liberties and those 
guarantees which the German warriors were incapable of trans- 
mitting to a well-regulated society, the commonality will regain one 
after another. JS'othing but feudalism could have sprung from the 
womb of barbarism ; but scarcely is feudalism established when we 
see monarchy and liberty nascent and growing in its womb. 

From the end of the ninth to the end of the tenth century, two Struggle of 
families were, in French history, the representatives and instru- *^® Roman 
ments of the two systems thus confronted and conflicted at that Germanic 
epoch, the imperial, which was falling, and the feudal, which was principles, 
rising. After the death of Charlemagne, his descendants, to the 
number of ten, from Louis the Debonnair to Louis the Sluggard, 
strove obstinately, but in vain, to maintain the unity of the empire 
and the unity of the central power. In four generations, on the 
other hand, the descendants of Eobert the Strong climbed to the 
head of feudal France. The former, though German in race, were 
imbued with the maxims, the traditions and the pretensions of that 
Eoman world which had been for a while resuscitated by their 
glorious ancestor; and they claimed it as their heritage. The 
latter preserved, at their settlement upon Gallo-Eoman territory, 
Germanic sentiments, manners, and instincts, and were occupied 
only with the idea of getting more and more settled and greater 
and greater in the new society which was little by little being 
formed upon the soil won by the barbarians ; their ibrefathera, 
Louis the Ultramarine and Lothaire were not, we may suppose 
less personally brave than Eobert the Strong and his son Eudes, 



62 History of France. 

Ijut when the Northmen put the Frankish dominions in peril; it 
was not to the descendants of Charlemagne, not to the emperor 
Charles the Fat, biit to the local and feudal chieftain, to Eudes, 
count of Paris, that the population turned for salvation ; and 
Eudes it was who saved them. 

In this painful parturition of French monarchy, one fact de- 
serves to be remarked, and that is the lasting respect attached, in 
the minds of the people, to the name and the reminiscences of the 
Carlovijigian rule, notwithstanding its decay. It was not alono 
the lustre of that name and of the memory of Charlemagne which 
inspired and prolonged this respect; a certain instinctive feeling 
about the worth of hereditary monarchy, as an element of stability 
and order, already existed amongst the populations, and glimpses 
thereof were visible amongst the rivals of the royal famil}^ in the 
hour of its dissolution. 
A.D. 987. On the 29th or 30th of June, 987, Hugh Capet was crowned, 
Bet^dne^" ^^^^^§ ^^ *^^ grandees of Frankish Gaul assembled at Senlis, and 
the dynasty of the Capetians was founded under the double in-. 
fluence of German manners and feudal connexions. Amongst the 
ancient Germans royal heirship was generally confined to one and 
the same family ; but election was often joined with heirship, and 
had more than once thrust the latter aside. Hugh Capet was head 
of the family which was the most illustrious in his time and the 
closest to the throne, on which the personal merit.s of Counts 
Eudes and Eobert had already twice seated it. He was also one of 
the greatest chieftains of feudal society, duke of the country which 
was already called France, and Count of Paris, of that city which 
Clovis, after his victories, had chosen as the centre of his do- 
minions. In view of the Eoman rather than Germanic pretensions 
of the Carlovingian heirs and of their admitted decay, the rise of 
Hugh Capet was the natural consequence of the principal facts 83 
well as of the manners of the period, and the crowning manifes- 
tation of the new social condition in France, that is, feudalism. 
Accordingly the event reached completion and confirmation with- 
out any great obstacle. The Carlovingian, Charles of Lorraine, 
vainly attempted to assert his rights ; but, after some gleams of 
success, he died in 992, and his descendants fell, if not into ob- 
scurity, at least into political insignificance. In vain, again, did 
certain feudal lords, especially in Southern France, refuse for some 
time their adhesion to Hugh Capet. Hugh possessed that in- 
telligent and patient moderation, which, when a position is once 
acquiied, is the best pledge of continuance. Several facts indicate 




GERBERT, AFTERWARD POPE SYLVESTER II. 



The Church 63 

that lie did not under-estimate the -worth and range of his title of 
king. At the same time, that by getting his son Eobert crowned with 
him, he secured for his line the next succession ; he also performed 
several acts which went beyond the limits of his feudal domains 
and proclaimed to all the kingdom the presence of the king. But 
those acts were temperate and wise; and the)' paved the Avay for 
the future without anticipating it. Hugh Capet confined himself 
carefully to the sphere of his recognized rights as well as of his 
effective strength, and his government remained faithful to the 
character of the revolution which had raised him to the throne, at 
the same time that it gave warning of the future progress of royalty 
independently of and over the head of feudalism. When he died, 
on the 24th of October, 996, the crown, which he hesitated, they 
say, to wear on his own head, passed without obstacle to his son 
Eobert, and the course which was to be followed for eight centuries, 
under the government of his descendants, by civilization in France, 
began to develope itself. 

It is worth while noticing that, far from aiding the accession of 
the new dynasty, the Court of Eome showed herself favourable to 
the old, and tried to save it without herself becoming too deeply 
compromised. Such was, from 985 to 996, the attitude of Pope 
John XVI., at the crisis which placed Hugh Capet upon the Attitude 
throne. In spite of this policy on the part of the Papacy, the of ^^ 
French Church took the initiative in the event, and supported the 
new king ; the Archbishop of Eheims affirmed the right of the 
people to accomplish a change of dynasty, and anointed Hugh 
Capet and his son Eobert. The accession of the Capetians was a 
work independent of all foreign influence and strictly national, in 
Church as well as in State. 

From 996 to 1108 the first three successors of Hugh Capet, his 
son Eobert, his grandson Henry I., and his great-grandson Philip I., 
sat upon the throne of France ; and during this long space of 
112 years the kingdom of France had not, sooth to say, any 
history. Parcelled out, by virtue of the feudal system, between a 
multitude of princes, independent, isolated, and scarcely sovereigns 
in their own dominions, keeping up anything like frequent inter- 
course only with their neighbours, and loosely united, by certain 
rules or customs of vassalage, to him amongst them who bore tho 
title of king, the France of the eleventh century existed in little 
more than name : Kormandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Aquitaine, 
Poitou, Anjou, Flanders, and l^ivernais were the real states and 
peoples, each with its own distinct life and history. One single 
event, the Crusade, united, towards the end of the century, those 



64 



History of France, 



iL.D. 1000. 

End of the 
world ex- 
pected. 



God's 
truce. 



A.D. 1031 

—1108. 
Reigns of 
Henry I. 

and 
Philip I. 



scattered sovereigns and peoples in one common idea and one com- 
bined action. 

In A.D. 1000, in consequence of the sense attached to certain 
words in the Sacred Books, many Christians expected the end of 
the world. The time of expectation was full of anxieties ; when 
the last day of the tenth and the first of the eleventh centuries 
were jiast, it was like a general regeneration ; it might have been 
said that time was beginning over again ; and the work was com- 
menced of rendering the Christian world worthy of the future. 
** Especially in Italy and in Gaul," says the chronicler Raoul 
Glaber, "men took in hand the reconstruction of the basilicas, 
although the greater part had no need thereof." Christian art, in 
its earliest form of the Gothic .style, dates from this epoch ; the 
power and riches of the Christian Church, in its different institu- 
tions, received, at this crisis of the human imagination, a fresh 
impulse, 

Other facts, some lamentable and some salutary, began, about 
this epoch, to assume in French history a place which was destined 
before long to become an important one. Piles of faggots were set 
up, first at Orleans and then at Toulouse, for the punishment of 
heretics. The heretics of the day were Manicheans ; at the same 
time a double portion of ire blazed forth against the Jews. 
Amongst Christians acts of oppression and violence on the part of 
the great against the small became so excessive and so frequent 
that they excited in country parts, particularly in N"ormandy, in- 
surrections which the insurgents tried to organize into permanent 
resistance. However, even in the midst of this cruel egotism and 
this gross unreason of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the ne- 
cessity, from a moral and social point of view, of struggling against 
such disgusting irregularities made itself felt and found zealous 
advocates. From this epoch are to be dated the first efforts to 
establish, in different parts of France, what was called God^ s peace, 
GodJs truce. The words were well chosen for prohibiting at the 
same time oppression and revolt, for it needed nothing less 
than law and the voice of God to put some restraint upon the 
barbarous manners and passions of men, great or small, lord or 
peasant. King Robert always showed himself favourable to this 
pacific work ; and he is the first amongst the five kings of France, 
in other respects very different, — himself, St. Louis, Louis XII., 
Henry IV., and Louis XVI., — who were particularly distinguished 
for sympathetic kindness and anxiety for the popular welfare. 

Though not so pious or so good as Robert, his son, Henry I., 
and his grandson, Philip L, were neither more energetic nor more 



The king and the nation. 65 

glorious kings. During their long reigns (the former from 1031 
to 1060, and the latter from 1060 to 1108) no important and well- 
prosecuted design distinguished their government. Their public 
life was passed at one time in petty warfare, without decisive 
results, against such and such vassals, at another, in acts of capri- 
cious intervention in the quarrels of their vassals amongst them- 
selves. Their home-life was neither less irregular nor conducted 
with more wisdom and regard for the public interest. In spite of 
their political mediocrity and their indolent licentiousness, however, 
Eobert, Henry I., and Philip I. were not, in the eleventh century, 
insignificant personages, without authority or practical influence, 
whom their contemporaries could leave out of the account. French ^.j^ ^. 
kingship in the eleventh century was sole power invested with a ship aid 
triple character, Germanic, Eoman, and religious ; its possessors *^^ l""^" 
were at the same time the chieftains of the conquerors of the soil, 
the successors of the Eoman emperors and of Charlemagne, and 
the lay delegates and representatives of the God of the Christians. 
Whatever were their weaknesses and their personal short-comings, 
they were not the mere titularies of a power in decay, and the 
kingly post was strong and full of blossom, as events were not 
slow to demonstrate. 

And as with the kingsnip, so with the community of France in 
the eleventh century. In spite of its dislocation into petty inco- 
herent and turbulent associations, it was by no means in decay. 
Irregularities of ambition, hatreds and quarrels amongst neighbours 
and relatives, outrages on the part of princes and peoples were 
incessantly renewed ; but energy of character, activity of mind, 
indomitable will and zeal for the liberty of the individual were 
not wanting, and they exhibited themselves passionately and at 
any risk, at one time by brutal or cynical outbursts which were 
followed occasionally by fervent repentance and expiation, at an- 
other by acts of courageous wisdom and disinterested piety. In 
ideas, events, and persons there was a blending of the strongest 
contrasts ; manners were rude and even savage, yet souls were 
filled with lofty and tender aspirations ; the authority of religious 
creeds at one time was on the point of extinction, yet at another 
shone forth gloriously in opposition to the arrogance and brutality 
of mundane passions ; ignorance was profound, and yet here and 
there, in the very heart of the mental darkness, gleamed bright 
centres of movement and intellectual labour. It was the period 
when Abelard, anticipating freedom of thought and of instruction, 
drew together upon^Mount St, Genevieve thousands of hearers 
anxious to follow him in the study of the great problems of Natui« 

F 



66 History of France 

and of the destiny of man and the world. And, far away from this 
tkrong, in the solitude of the abbey of Bee, St. Anselm was offering 
to his monks a Christian and philosophical demonstration of the 
^ existence of God — "faith seeking understanding " [fides qurereiis 
inteUectum), as he himself used to say. It was the period, too, 
when, distressed at the licentiousness which was spreading 
throughout the Church, as well as lay society, two illustrious 
monks, St. Bernard and St. Norbert, not only went preaching 
every where reformation of morals, but laboured at, and succeeded 
in establishing for monastic life a system of strict discipline and 
severe austerity. Lastly, it was the period when, in the laic world, 
was created and developed the most splendid fact of the middle 
ages, knighthood, that noble soaring of imaginations and souls 
towards the ideal of Christian virtue and soldierly honour. 
of Ch°''^ In the France of the middle ages, though practically crimes and 
tianity. disorders, moral and social evils abounded, yet men had in their 
souls and their imaginations loftier j,nd purer instincts and desires ; 
their notions of virtue and their ideas of justice were very superior 
to the practice pursued around them and amongst themselves ; a 
certain moral ideal hovered above this low and tumultuous com- 
munity and attracted the notice and obtained the regard of men 
in whose life it is but very faintly reflected. The Christian re- 
ligion undoubtedly was, if not the only, at any rate the principal 
cause of this great fact ; for its particular characteristic is to arouse 
amongst men a lofty moral ambition by keeping constantly before 
their eyes a type infinitely beyond the reach of human nature and 
yet profoundly sympathetic with it. To Christianity it was that 
the middle ages owed knighthood, that institution which, in the 
midst of anarchy and barbarism, gave a poetical and moral beauty 
to the period. It was feudal knighthood and Christianity together 
which produced the two great and glorious events of those times, 
the Norman conquest of England and the Crusades. 
Conquest From the time of Rollo's settlement in N'ormandy, the commu- 
by the nications of the Normans with England had become more and 
Normans, more frequent and important for the two countries. The success 
of the invasions of the Danes in England in the tenth century and 
the reigns of three kings of the Danish line had obliged the princes 
of Saxon race to take refuge in Normandy, the duke of which, 
Richard I., had given his daughter Emma in marriage to their 
grandfather, Ethelred II. When at the death of the last Danish 
king, Hardicanute, the Saxon prince Edward ascended the throne 
of his fathers, he had passed twenty-seven years of exile in Nor- 
mandy, and lie returned to England " almost a stranger," in the 



The Anglo-Saxons and the Normans. 67 

words of tlie chronicles, to the country of his ancestors ; far more 
Norman than Saxon in his manners, tastes and language, and 
surrounded by iNTormans, whose numbers and prestige under his 
reign increased from day to day. A hot rivalry, nationally as well 
as courtly, grew up between them and the Saxons. At the head 
of these latter was Godwin, count of Kent, and his five sons, the 
eldest of whom, Harold, was destined before long to bear the 
whole brunt of the struggle. Between these powerful rivals 
Edward the Confessor, a pacific, pious, gentle, and undecided king, 
wavered incessantly ; at one time trying to resist, and at another 
compelled to yield to the pretensions and seditions by which he 
was beset. Tn 1051 the Saxon party and its head, Godwin, had 
risen in revolt. Duke William, on invitation, perhaps, from King 
Edward, paid a brilliant visit to England, where he found ISTormans 
every where established and powerful, in Church as well as in 
State J in command of the fleets, ports, and principal English 
places. King Edward received him " as his own son ; gave him 
arms, horses, hounds, and hawking-birds," and sent him home fuU 
of presents and hopes. The chronicler, Ingulf, who accompanied 
William on his return to Normandy, and remained attached to 
him as private secretary, affirms tliat, during this visit, not only 
was there no question, between King Edward and the Duke of 
Normandy, of the latter's possible succession to the throne of 
England, but that never as yet had this probability occupied the 
attention of William. 

It is very doubtful whether William had said nothing upon the Duke "Wil- 
subject to King Edward at that time ; and it is certain, from H^roW. 
William's own testimony, that he had for a long while been 
thinking about it. Eour years after this visit of the duke to 
England, King Edward was reconciled to and lived on good terms 
with the family of the Godwins. Their father was dead, and the 
eldest son, Harold, asked the king's permission to go to Normandy 
and claim the release of his brother and nephew, who had been 
left as hostages in the keeping of Duke William. The king did 
not approve of the project. " I have no wish to constrain thee," 
said he to Harold : " but if thou go, it will be without my consent : 
and, assuredly, thy trip will bring some misfortune upon thee and 
our country. I know Duke William and his crafty spirit ; he 
hates thee, and will grant thee naught unless he see his advantage 
therefrom. The only way to make him give up the hostages will 
be to send some other than thyself." Harold, however, persisted, 
and went. William received him with apparent cordiality, 
promised him the release of the two hostages, escorted him and his 

F 2 



68 History of France. 

comrades from castle to castle, and from entertainment to enter- 
tainment, made them knights of the grand Norman order, and even 
invited them, "by way of trying their new spurs," to accompany 
him on a little warlike expedition he was about to undertake in 
Brittany. Harold and his comrades behaved gallantly ; and he 
and William shared the same tent and the same table. On 
returning, as they trotted side by side, William turned the con- 
versation upon his youthful connexion with the king of England. 
** When Edward and I," said he to the Saxon, " were living like 
brothers under the same roof, he promised, if ever he became 
king of England, to make me heir to his kingdom ; I should very 
much like thee, Harold, to help me to realize this promise ; and be 
assured that, if by thy aid I obtain the kingdom, whatsoever thou 
askest of me I will grant it forthwith." Harold, in surprise and 
confusion, answered by an assent which he tried to make as vague 
as possible. William took it as positive. " Since thou dost 
consent to serve me," said he, " thou must engage to fortify the 
castle of Dover, dig a well of fresh water there, and put it into 
the hands of my men-at arms ; thou must also give me thy sister 
to be married to one of my barons, and thou must thyself espouse 
my daughter Adele." Harold, " not witting," says the chronicler, 
" how to escape from this pressing danger," promised all the duke 
asked of him, reckoning, doubtless, on disregarding his engage- 
ment ; and for the moment William asked him nothing more. 

Harold But a few days afterwards he summoned, at Avranches according 

** th h '^ to some, and at Bayeux according to others, and, more probably 

promises, still, at Bonneville-sur-Touques, his Norman barons ; and, in the 
midst of this assembly, at which Harold was present, William, 
seated with his naked sword in his hand, caused to be brought 
and placed upon a table covered with cloth of gold, two re- 
liquaries. *' Harold," said he, " I call upon thee, in presence of 
this noble assemblage, to confirm by oath the promises thou didst 
make me, to wit, to aid me to obtain the kingdom of England 
after the death of King Edward, to espouse my daughter Adele, 
and to send me thy sister to be married to one of my people." 
Harold, who had not expected this public summons, nevertheless 
did not hesitate any more than he had hesitated in his private 
conversation with William ; he drew near, laid his hand on the 
two reliquaries and swore to observe, to the best of his power, his 
agreement with the duke, should he live and God help. " Gbd 
help ! " repeated those who were present. William made a sign ; 
the cloth of gold was removed and there was discovered a tub filled 
to tte edge with bones and relics of all the saints that could be got 



Invasion of England. 69 

together. The chronicler-poet, Eobert Wace, who, alone and 
long afterwards, recounts this last particular, adds that Harold was 
visibly troubled at sight of this saintly heap ; but he had sworn. 
It is honourable to human nature not to be indifferent to oaths 
even when those who exact them have but small reliance upon 
them, and when he who takes them has but small intention of 
keeping them. And so" Harold departed, laden with presents, 
leaving William satisfied but not over-confident. Edward the 
Confessor died on the 5th of January, 1066 ; the very day after 
the celebration of his obsequies Harold was proclaimed king, amidst 
no small public disquietude, and Aldred, archbishop of York, lost 
no titae in anointing him. 

On receiving this unlooked for piece of intelligence William Harold 
gathered together his most important and most trusted counsellors ; pyocl*imed 
and they were unanimous in urging him to resent the perjury and 
injury. He sent to Harold a messenger charged to say, *' William, 
duke of the l!f ormans, doth recall to thee the oath thou swarest to 
him with thy mouth and with thy hand, on real and saintly 
relics." " It is true," answered Harold, " that I sware, but on 
compulsion ; I promised what did not belong to me ; my kingship 
is not mine own ; I cannot put it off from me without the consent 
of the country. I cannot any the more, without the consent of 
the country, espouse a foreigner. As for my sister, whom the 
duke claims for one of his chieftains, she died within the year ; 
if he will, I will send him the corpse." William replied without 
any violence, claiming the conditions sworn, and specially Harold's 
marriage with his daughter Adele. For all answer to this summons 
Harold married a Saxon, sister of two powerful Saxon chieftains, 
Edwin and Morkar. There was an open rapture ; and William 
swore that " within the year he would go and claim, at the sword's 
point, payment of what was due to him, on the very spot where 
Harold thought himself to be most firm on his feet." 

Dives was the place of assemblage appointed for fleet and army. A.D. 1066. 
Wniiam repaired thither about the end of August, 1066. But for ^^^^^ g^^jt 
several weeks contrary winds prevented him from putting to sea ; for Eng- 
some vessels which made the attempt perished in the tempest ; ^* ' 
and some of the volunteer adventurers got disgusted, and deserted. 
William maiutained strict discipline amongst this multitude, forbid- 
ding plunder so strictly that " the cattle fed in the fields in fuU 
security." The soldiers grew tired of waiting in idleness and often 
in sickness. "Yon is a madman," said they, "who is minded to 
possess himself 01 another's land ; God is against the design and so 
refuses us a wind." About the 20th of September the weather 



70 



History of France. 



Harold 
defeats 
Tostig. 



changed. The fleet got ready, but could only go and anchor at 
St. Valery, at the mouth of the Somme. There it was necessary to 
wait several more days ; impatience and disquietude were redoubled; 
** and there appeared in the heavens a star with a tail, a certain 
sign of great things to come." "William had the shrine of St. Valery 
brought out and paraded about, being more impatient in his soul 
than any body, but more confident in his will and his good 
fortune. There was brought to him a spy whom Harold had sent 
to watch the forces and plans of the enemy; and William dis- 
missed him, saying, " Harold hath no need to take any care or be 
at any charges to know how we be and what we be doing ; he shall 
see for himself, and shall feel before the end of the year." At last, 
on the "iTth of September, 1066, the sun rose on a calm sea and 
with a favourable wind ; and towards evening the fleet set out. 
The Mora, the vessel on which William was, and which had been 
given to him by his wife Matilda, led the way ; and a figure in 
gilded bronze, some say in gold, representing their youngest son 
William, had been placed on the prow, with the face towards 
England. Being a better sailor than the others, this ship was soon 
a long way ahead ; and William had a mariner sent to the top of 
the mainmast to see if the fleet were following. " I see naught but 
sea and sky," said the mariner. William had the ship brought to ; 
and the second time the mariner said, " I see four ships." Before 
long he cried, " I see a forest of masts and sails." On the 29ih of 
September, St. Michael's-day, the expedition arrived off the coast 
of England, at Pevensey, near Hastings, and " when the tide had 
ebbed and the ships remained aground on the strand," says the 
chronicle, the landing was effected without obstacle ; not a Saxon 
soldier appeared on the coast. William was the last to leave his 
ship ; and on setting foot on the sand he made a false step and 
fell. "Bad sign !" was muttered around him; "God have us in 
His keeping !" "What say you, lords !" cried William: "by the 
glory of God I have grasped this land with my hands ; all that 
there is of it is ours." 

Whilst William was making for the southern coast of England, 
Harold was repairing by forced marches to the north, in order to 
defend, against the rebellion of his brother Tostig and the invasion 
of a !N"orwegian army, his short-lived kingship, thus menaced, at 
two ends of the country, by two formidable enemies. On the 25th 
of September, 1066, he gained at York a brilliant victory over his 
northern foe ; and, wounded as he was, he no sooner learnt that Duke 
William had on the 29tb pitched his camp and planted his flag at 
Pevensey, than he set out in haste for the south. 



Victory of the N ormans. 71 

On the eve of the battle, the Saxons passed the night in amuse- October 14. 
ment, eating, drinking, and singing, with great uproar ; the °^*{'^® °^ 
JNormans, on the contrary, were preparing their arms, saying their 
prayers, and " confessing to their priests — all who would." On the 
14th of October, 1066, when Duke William put on his armour, his 
coat of mail was given to him the wrong way. " Bad omen ! " 
cried some of his people : " if such a thing had happened to us, we 
would not fight to-day." " Ee not disquieted," said the duke : 
" I have never believed in sorcerers and diviners, and I never liked 
them ; I believe in God, and in Him I put my trust." He as- 
sembled his men-at-arms, and " setting himself upon a high place, 
so that all might hear him," he said to them, " My true and loyal 
friends, ye have crossed the seas for love of me, and for that I 
cannot thank ye as I ought ; but I will make what return I may, 
and what I have ye shall have. I am not come only to take what 
I demanded or to get my rights, but to punish felonies, treasons, 
and breaches of faith committed against our people by the men of 
this country. Think, moreover, what great honour ye will have to- 
day if the day be ours. And bethink ye that, if ye be discomfited, 
ye be dead men without help ; for ye have not whither ye may 
retreat, seeing that our ships be broken up and our mariners be 
here with us. He who flies will be a dead man ; he who fights 
will be saved. For God's sake, let each man do his duty ; trust 
we in God, and the day will be ours." 

The address was too long for the duke's faithful comrade, 
William Fitz-Osbern. " My lord," said he, " we dally ; let us all 
to arms and forward, forward ! " The army got in motion, starting 
from the hill of Telham or Heathland, according to Mr. Freeman, 
marching to attack the English on the opposite hiU of Senlac. 
A xTorman, called Taillefer, " who sang very well, and rode a horse 
which was very fast, came up to the duke. * My lord,' said he, 
* I have served you long, and you owe me for all my service : pay 
me to-day, an it please you ; grant unto me, for recompense in full, 
to strike the first blow in the battle.' ' I grant it,' quoth the 
duke. So Taillefer darted before him, singing the deeds of Charle- 
magne, of Eoland, of Oliver, and of the vassals who fell at 
Eoncesvalles." As he sang, he played with his sword, throwing it 
up into the air and catching it in his right hand ; and the JNormans 
followed, repeating his songs, and crying, " God help ! God help !" 
The English, intrenched upon a plateau towards which the Nor- 
mans were ascending, awaited the assault, shouting and defying 
the foe. 

The battle, thus begun, lasted nine hours with equal obstinacy 
on both sides, and varied success from hour to hour ; it ended, how- 



J2 History of France. 

t'A''er, in the defeat of the English ; their intrenchments were stormed. 
Harold fell mortally wounded by an arrow which pierced his skull ; 
his two brothers and his bravest comrades fell at his side ; the 
fight was . prolonged between the English dispersed and the Nor- 
mans pursuing ; the standard sent from Eome to the Duke of 
Normandy had replaced the Saxon flag on the very spot where 
Harold had fallen \ and all around, the ground continued to get 
covered with dead and dying, fruitless victims of the passions of 
the combatants. Next day William went over the field of battle ; 
and he was heard to say in a tone of mingled triumph and sorrow 
" Here is verily a lake of blood ! " 

There was, long after the battle of Senlac or Hastings, as it is 
commonly called, a patriotic superstition in the country to the 
effect that, when the rain had moistened the soil, there were to be 
seen traces of blood on the ground where it had taken place. 
Conse- It was not every thing, however, to be victorious, it was still 

?h ^"h^ti 1 ii^cessary to be recognized as king. When the news of the defeat 
" at Hastings and the death of Harold was spread abroad in the 
country, the emotion was lively and seemed to be profound ; the 
great Saxon national council, the Wittenagemote, assembled at 
London ; the remnants of the Saxon army rallied there ; and search 
was made for other kings than the Norman duke. Harold left two 
sons, very young and not in a condition to reign ; but his two 
brothers-in-law, Edwin and Morkar, held dominion in the north of 
England, whilst the southern provinces, and amongst them the 
city of London, had a popular aspirant, a nephew of Edward the 
Confessor, in Edgar surnamed Atheling (the noble, the illustrious), 
as the descendant of several kings. What with these different pre- 
tensions, there was discussion, hesitation, and delay ; but at last 
the young Edgar prevailed, and was proclaimed king. Meanwhile 
W^illiam was advancing with his army, slowly, prudently, as a man 
resolved to risk nothing and calculating upon the natural results of 
his victory. At some points he encountered attempts at resistance, 
but he easily overcame them, occupied successively Eomney, Dover, 
Canterbury, and Eochester, appeared before London without trying 
to enter it, and moveil on Winchester, which was the residence of 
Edward the Confessor's widow. Queen Editha, who had received 
that important city as dowry. Through respect for her, William, 
who presented himself in the character of relative and heir of King 
Edward, did not enter the place, and merely called upon the in- 
habitants to take the oath of allegiance to him and do him homage, 
which they did with the queen's consent. The Archbishops of 
Canterbury and York, many other prelates and laic chieftains, the 
principal citizens of London, the two brothers-in-law of Harold, 



Tlie Crusades. 73 

Edwin and Morkar, and the young king of yesterday, Edgar 
Atheling himself, having tendered their submission to the conqueror, 
William entered London, and fixed for his coronation upon Dftoem- 
Christmas-day, December 26th, 1066. Either by desiie of the ^I^ ^^' ^ 
prelate himself or by "William's own order, it was not the Arch- tion. of 
bishop of Canterbury, Stigand, who presided, according to custom, "Willia 
at the ceremony ; the duty devolved upon the Archbishop of York, 
Aldred, who had but lately anointed Edgar Atheling. At the 
appointed hour, William arrived at Westminster Abbey, the latest 
work and the burial-place of Edward the Confessor. The Con- 
queror marched between two hedges of Norman soldiers, behind 
whom stood a crowd of people, cold and sad, though full of 
curiosity. A numerous cavalry guarded the approaches to the 
church and the quarters adjoining. Two hundred and sixty counts, 
barons, and knights of Normandy went in with the duke. Geoffrey, 
bishop of Coutances, demanded, in French, of the Normans, if they 
would that their duke should take the title of King of the English. 
The Archbishop of York demanded of the English, in the Saxon 
tongue, if they would have for king the Duke of Normandy. 
Noisy acclamations arose in the church and resounded outside. 
The soldiery, posted in the neighbourhood, took the confused roar 
for a sym];)tom of something wrong and in their suspicious rage set 
fire to the neighbouring houses. The flames spread rapidly. The 
people who were rejoicing in the church caught the alarm, and a 
multitude of men and women of every rank flung themselves out 
of the edifice. Alone and trembling, the bishops with some clerics 
and monks remained before the altar and accomplished the work of 
anointment upon the king's head, " himself trembling," says the 
chronicle. Nearly all the rest who were present ran to the fire, 
some to extinguish it, others to steal and pillage in the midst of 
the consternation. William terminated the ceremony by taking the 
usual oath of Saxon kings at their coronation, adding thereto, as 
of his own motion, a promise to treat the English people according 
to their own laws and as well as they had ever been treated by the 
best of their own kings. Then he went forth from the church 
King of England. 

Amongst the great events of European history none was for a The crtt 
longer time in preparation or more naturally brought about than sades. 
the Crusades. Christianity, from her earliest days, had seen in 
Jerusalem her sacred cradle ; it had been, in past times, the home 
of her ancestors, the Jews, and the centre of their history ; and, 
afterwards, the scene of the life, death, and resurrection of her 
Divine Founder. Jerusalem became more and more the Holy 



74 History of France. 

City. To go to Jerusalem, to visit the Mount of Olives, Calvary, 
and the tomb of Jesus, was, in their most evil days and in the 
midst of their obscurity and their martyrdoms, a pious passion 
with the early Christians. Events, however, soon rendered the 
pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult, and for some time impossible ; 
the Mussulmans, khalifs of Egypt or Persia, had taken Jerusalem ; 
and the Christians, native inhabitants or foreign visitors, continued 
to be oppressed, harassed, and humiliated there. At two periods 
Condition their condition was temporarily better. At the commencement of 
Christians ^^® ninth century, Charlemagne reached even there with the great- 
in ness of his mind and of his power ; he kept up so close a friend- 
* ship with Haroun-al-Raschid, king of Persia, that this prince 
preferred his good graces to the alliance of the sovereigns of the 
earth. Accordingly, when the ambassadors whom Charles had 
sent, with presents, to visit the sacred tomb of our divine Saviour 
and the site of the resurrection, presented themselves before him 
and expounded to him their master's wish, Haroun did not content 
himself with entertaining Charles's request, he wished, besides, to 
give up to him the complete proprietorship of those places hallowed 
by the certification of our redemption, and he sent him, with the 
most magnificent presents, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. At 
the end of the same century, another Christian sovereign, far less 
powerful and less famous, John Zimisces, emperor of Constantinople, 
in a war against the Mussulmans of Asia, penetrated into Galilee, 
made himself master of Tiberias, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor, 
received a deputation which brought him the keys of Jerusalem, 
"and we have placed," he says himself, "garrisons in all the dis- 
trict lately subjected to our rule." These were but strokes of 
foreign intervention giving the Christians of Jerusalem gleams of 
hope rather than lasting diminution of their miseries. However, 
it is certain that, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, 
pilgrimages multiplied and were often accomplished without obstacle. 
At last the crusading movement was brought about by the preach- 
ing of an obscure pilgrim, at first a soldier, then a married man and 
father of several childrea, then a monk and a vowed recluse, Peter 
the Hermit, who was born in the neighbourhood of Amiens, about 
1050, and who had gone, as so many others had, to Jerusalem "to 
say his prayers there." 
A.D. 1095. In 1095, Pope Urban 11. was at Clermont, in Auvergne, pre- 
Council of gi(Jing at the grand council, at which thirteen archbishops and two 
Peter the' hundred and five bishops or abbots were met together, with so many 
Hermit -nrmces and lay-lords, that " about the middle of the month of 
the cru- November the towns and villages of tho neighbourhood were full of 
sade. 



Preaching of the Crusade, 75 

people, and divers were constrained to have their tents and 
pavilions set up amidst the fields and meadows, notwithstanding 
that the season and the country were cold to an extreme." The 
first nine sessions of the council were devoted to the affairs of the 
Church in the West ; but at the tenth Jerusalem and the Christians 
of the East became the subject of deliberation. The Pope went 
out of the church wherein the Council was assembled and mounted 
a platform erected upon a vast open space in the midst of the 
throng. Peter the Hermit, standing at his side, spoke first, and 
told the story of his sojourn at Jerusalem, all he had seen of the 
miseries and humiliations of the Christians, and all he himself had 
suffered there, for he had been made to pay tribute for admission 
into the Holy City, and for gazing upon the spectacle of the 
exactions, insults, and tortures he was recounting. After him Speech of 
Pope Urban II. spoke, in the French tongue, no doubt, as Peter Tjrbaifll 
had spoken, for he was himself a Frenchman, as the majority of 
those present were, grandees and populace. He made a long speech, 
entering upon the most painful details connected with the sufferings 
of ^the Christians of Jerusalem, " that royal city which the Ee- 
deemer of the human race had made illustrious by His coming, had 
honoured by His residence, had hallowed by His passion, had pur- 
chased by His death, had distinguished by His burial. She now 
demands of you her deliverance .... men of France, men from 
beyond the mountains, nations chosen and beloved of God, right 
valiant knights, recall the virtues of your ancestors, the virtue and 
greatness of King Charlemagne and your other kings ; it is from 
you above all that Jerusalem awaits the help she invokes, for to 
you, above all nations, God has vouchsafed signal glory in arms. 
Take ye, then, the road to Jerusalem for the remission of your 
sins, and depart assured of the imperishable glory which awaits 
you in the kingdom of heaven." 

From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and general Entha- 
shout, " God willeth it ! God willeth it ! " The pope paused for "J^sm of 
a moment ; and then, making a sign with his hand as if to ask 
for silence, he continued, " If the Lord God were not in your 
souls, ye would not all have uttered the same words. In the 
battle, then, be those your war-cry, those words that came from 
God ; in the army of the Lord let naught be heard but that one 
shout, * God willeth it ! God wiUeth it ! ' We ordain not, and we 
advise not that the journey be undertaken by the old or the weak, 
or such as be not suited for arms, and let not women set out 
without their husbands or their brothers ; let the rich help the 
poor j nor priests nor clerks may go without the leave of their 



the crU' 
sades. 



76 History of France, 

bishops ; and no layman shall commence the march save with the 
blessing of his pastor. Whosoever hath a wish to enter upon this 
pilgrimage let him Avear upon his brow or his breast the cross of 
the Lord, and let him who, in accomplishment of his desire, shall 
be willing to march away, place the cross behind him, between his 
shoulders ; for thus he will fulfil the precept of the Lord, who 
said, * He that doth not take up his cross and follow Me, is not 
worthy of Me.' " 

The enthusiasm was general and contagious, as the first shout of 
the crowd had been; and a pious prelate, Adhemar, bishop ofPuy, 
was the first to receive the cross from the pope's hands. It was of 
red cloth or silk, sewn upon the right shoulder of the coat or cloak, 
or fastened on the front of the helmet. The crowd dispersed to 
assume it and spread it. 
Motives of Eeligious enthusiasm was not the only, but the first and the de- 
termining motive of the crusade ; we must add to it the still vivid 
recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the west by 
the Mussulman invasions in France, Spain and Italy, and the fear 
of seeing them begin again. Finally, there was no doubt a great 
motive power in the spirit of adventure and the love of enterprise 
which characterize times of intellectual sloth and of partly mono- 
tonous existence. 
A.D. 1096. As early as the 8th of March, 1096, and in the course of the 
dition^^* spring three mobs rather than armies, amounting to three hundred 
thousand men, set out under the command of Peter the Hermit, 
Walter the Moneyless and other enthusiasts of the same rank. 
Peter walked at its head, with a rope about his waist, exhibiting every 
mark of monkish austerity ; he took the road to Constantinople, but 
as no provision was made for the subsistence of the army on its 
march, its disorder was extreme ; being constrained to exist by 
plunder, it first fell upon the Jews, and twelve thousand of that 
unfortunate nation were massacred in Bavaria alone, but as aU the 
provinces did not abound in Jews to be robbed, the inhabitants 
attacked this unprovided body of crusaders, and slaughtered vast 
numbers ; the remainder at length arrived at Jerusalem. The 
emperor Alexius Comnenus wisely assisted this formidable rabble 
to pass the Bosphorus with all convenient speed. As soon as they 
arrived on the plains of Asia, they were attacked by Soleyman, the 
Turkish sultan, and the chief part slain almost without resistance. 
Amongst the leaders fell Walter the Moneyless, who it is said had 
really acquired a considerable portion 01 military skill. Peter the 
Hermit found his way back to Constantinople, and indeed was 
afterwards present at the capture 01 the Holy Sepulchre. The more 



The Crusaders at Jerusalem. 77 

disciplined armies soon after arrived at the Imperial city, 
under the command of Godfrey of Eouillon, a prince of Brabant; 
the counts of Vermandois and Toulouse ; Robert, Duke of Nor- 
mandy ; Eobert, earl of Flanders ; and various other leaders of dis- 
tinction. The soldiers of the Cross, when mustered on the banks of 
the Bosphorus, amounted to the amazing number of one hundred 
thousand horse and six hundred thousand foot. Notwithanding 
the intractable spirit and want of discipline in the Crusaders, yet 
their zeal, courage and force carried them irresistibly forward to the 
completion of their enterprise. "With infinite jealousy and alarm, 
the Greek emperor Alexius Comnenus beheld this mighty host in 
the neighbourhood of his capital, and his fleet was again put into 
requisition. The first attempt of the Crusaders was against the 
ancient city of Nicomedia : assisted by the emperor, they became 
masters of the place in seven weeks. After crossing the lesser 
Asia, they defeated Soleyman in the great battle of Doryloeum, and 
in the month of October besieged Antipch, which, after a siege of 
incredible labour and difficulty, surrendered to their persevering 
efforts in the following June (1098). 

The Crusaders were now reduced to an effective force no greater 
than twenty thousand foot and fifteen thousand horse, and it was a 
year from the capture of Antioch before they found themselves in 
a condition to attack Jerusalem, which city, after siege of five 
weeks, was taken by storm. On the 14th of July, 1099, at day- A.D. 1099. 
break, the assault began at divers points ; and next day, Friday, je.us^em. 
the 15th of July, at three in the afternoon, exactly at the hour at 
which, according to Holy Writ, Jesus Christ had yielded up the 
ghost, saying, " Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," 
Jerusalem was completely in the hands of the crusaders. We have 
no heart to dwell on the massacres which accompanied the victory 
so dearly purchased by the conquerors. The historians, Latin or 
Oriental, set down at 70,000 the number of Mussulmans massacred 
on the ramparts, in the mosques, in the streets, underground, and 
wherever they had attempted to find refuge : a number exceeding 
that of the armed inhabitants and the garrison of the city. Battle- 
madness, thirst for vengeance, ferocity, brutality, greed, and every 
hateful passion were satiated without scruple, in the name of their 
holy cause. When they were weary of slaughter, " orders were 
given," says Eobert the monk, " to those of the Saracens who re- 
mained alive and were reserved for slavery, to clean the cicy, 
remove from it the dead, and purify it from all traces of such fearful 
carnage. They promptly obeyed ; removed, with tears, the dead ; 
erected outside the gates de^d -houses fashioned like citadels or 



78 History of France, 

defensive buildings ; collected in baskets dissevered limbs ; carried 
them away, and washed off the blood which stained the floors of 
temples and houses." 

Eight or ten days after the capture of Jerusalem, the crusader- 
cbiefs, assembled to deliberate upon the election of a king of their 
prize. There were several who were suggested for it and might 
have pretended to it. Eobert Shorthose, duke of Normandy, gave 
an absolute refusal, "liking better," says an English chronicler, 
** to give himself up to repose and indolence in Normandy than to 
serve as a soldier the King of kings : for which God never forgave 
him." Raymond, count of Toulouse, was already advanced in 
years, and declared " that he would have a horror of bearing the 
name of king in Jerusalem, but that he would give his consent 
to the election of any one else." Tancred was and wished to 
Godfrey de i^e only the first of knights. Godfrey de Bouillon the more 
elected easily united votes in that he did not seek them. He was 
king. valiant, discreet, worthy, and modest ; and his own servants, being 

privately sounded, testified to his possession of the virtues which 
are put in practice without any show. He was elected King of 
Jerusalem, and he accepted the burden whilst refusing the insignia. 
** I will never wear a crown of gold," he said, " in the place 
where the Saviour of the world was crowned with thorns." And 
he assumed only the title of Defender and Baron of the Holy 
Sepulchre. 

It is a common belief amongst historians that, after the capture 
of Jerusalem, and the election of her king, Peter the Hermit 
entirely disappeared from history. It is true that he no longer 
played an active part, and that, on returning to Europe, he went 
Death of ' into retirement near Huy, in the diocese of Liege, where he founded 
Peter the a monastery, and where he died on the 11th of July, 1115. But 
William of Tyre bears witness that Peter's contemporaries were 
not ungrateful to him, and did not forget him Avhen he had done 
his work. " The faithful," says he, " dwellers at Jerusalem, who 
four or five years before had seen the venerable Peter there, re- 
cognizing at that time in the same city him to whom the patriarch 
had committed letters invoking the aid of the princes of the West, 
bent the knee before him, and offered him their respects in all 
humility. They recalled to mind the circumstances of his first 
voyage ; and they praised the Lord who had endowed him with 
effectual power of speech and with strength to rouse up nations 
and kings to bear so many and such long toils for love of the 
name of Christ. Both in private and in public aU the faithful 
at Jerusalem exerted themselves to render to Peter the Hermit the 



First results of the Crusades. 79 

highest honours, and attributed to him alone, after God, tteir 
happiness in having escaped from the hard servitude under "which 
they had been for so many years groaning, and in seeing the holy 
city recovering her ancient freedom." 

In the month of August, 1099, the Crusade, to judge by ap- First re- 
pearances, had attained its object. Jerusalem was in the hands of suits of tli«. 
the Christians, and they had set up in it a king, the most pious 
and most disinterested of the crusaders. Close to this ancient 
kingdom were growing up likewise, in the two chief cities of 
Syria and IMesopotamia, Antioch and Edessa, two Christian prin- 
cipalities, in the possession of two crusader-chiefs, Bohemond 
and Baldwin. A third Christian principality was on the point of 
getting founded at the foot of Libanus, at Tripolis, for the advan- 
tage of another crusader, Bertrand, eldest son of Count Eaymond 
of Toulouse. The conquest of Syria and Palestine seemed accom- 
plished, in the name of the faith, and by the armies of Christian 
Europe ; and the conquerors calculated so surely upon their fixture 
that, during his reign, short as it was (for he was elected king 
July 23, 1099, and died July 18, 1100, aged only forty years), 
Godfrey de Bouillon caused to be drawn up and published, under 
the title of Assizes of Jerusalem, a code of laws, which transferred 
to Asia the customs and traditions of the feudal system, just as 
they existed in France at the moment of his departure for the 
Holy Land. 

Eorty-six years afterwards, in 1145, the Mussulmans, under the Saladin's 
leadership of Zangbi, sultan of Aleppo and of Mossoul, had retaken successes, 
Edessa. Forty -two years after that, in 1187, Saladin (Salah-el 
Eddyn), sultan of Egypt and of Syria, had put an end to the 
Christian kingdom of Jerusalem ; and only seven years later, in 
1194, Eichard Co^ur de Lion, king of England, after the most 
heroic exploits in Palestine, on arriving in sight of Jerusalem, 
retreated in despair, covering his eyes with 'his shield, and saying 
that he was not worthy to look upon the city which he was not in 
a condition to conquer. When he re-embarked at St. Jean d'Acre, 
casting a last glance and stretching out his arms towards the 
coast, he cried, " Most Holy Land, I commend thee to the care 
of the Almighty ; and may he grant me long life enough to return 
hither and deliver thee from the yoke of the infidels ! " A century 
had not yet rolled by since the triumph of the first crusaders, and 
the dominion they had acquired by conquest in the Holy Land 
had become, even in the eyes of their most vaKant and most 
powerful successors, an impossibility. 

Ifevertheless, repeated efforts and glory and even victories were 



8o History of France. 

not tlien, and were not to be still later, unknown amongst the 
Christians in their struggle against the Mussulmans for the 
A.D. 1099 possession of the Holy Land. In the space of a hundred and 
Seven cru- seventy-one years, from the coronation of Godfrey de Bouillon as 
sades take king of Jerusalem, in 1099, to the death of St. Louis, wearing the 
place. cross before Tunis, in 1270, seven grand crusades were under- 

taken with the same design by the greatest sovereigns of Christian 
Europe ; the Kings of France and England, the Emperors of 
Germany, the King of Denmark, and princes of Italy successively 
engaged therein. And they all failed. It was in France, by the 
French people, and under French chiefs, that the crusades were 
begun ; and it was with St. Louis, dying before Tunis beneath the 
banner of the cross, that they came to an end. They received in 
the history of Europe the glorious name of Qesta Dei per Francos 
(God's worJi's by French hands) ; and they have a right to keep, 
in the history of France, the place they really occupied. 
Causes of During a reign of twenty-nine years, Louis VI., called tJie Fat, 
crusade. son of Philip L, did not trouble himself about the East or the 
crusades, at that time in all their fame and renown. Being rather 
a man of sense than an enthusiast in the cause either of piety or 
glory, he gave all his attention to the establishment of some order, 
justice, and royal authority in his as yet far from extensive king- 
dom. A tragic incident, however, gave the crusade chief place in 
the thoughts and life of his son, Louis VII., called the Young, 
who succeeded him in 1137. He got himself rashly embroiled, in 
1142, in a quarrel with Pope Innocent II., on the subject of the 
election of the Archbishop of Bourges. The pope and the king 
had each a different candidate for the see. "The king is a child," 
said the pope ; "he must get schooling, and be kept from learning 
bad habits." " N"ever, so long as I live," said the king, " shall 
Peter de la Chatre (the pope's candidate) enter the city of Bourges." 
The chapter of Bourges, thinking as the pope thought, elected 
Peter de la Chatre ; and Theobald II., count of Champagne, took 
sides for the archbishop elect. " Mind your own business," said 
the king to him ; your dominions are large enough to occupy 
you ; and leave me to govern my own as I have a mind." Theobald 
persisted in backing the elect of pope and chapter. The pope 
excommunicated the king. The king declared war against the 
Count of Champagne ; and went and besieged Vitry. linearly all 
the town was built of wood, and the besiegers set fire to it. The 
besieged fled for refuge to a church, in which they were invested ; 
and the fire reached the church, which was entirely consumed, 
together with the thirteen hundred inhabitants, men, women, and 



The Crusades. 8 1 

cliildren, who had retreated thither. Then, by way of expiating 
80 foul an act of cruelty, Louis the young joined with the Emperor 
Conrad III. in carrying on the second crusade, which was preached 
at Vezelay by the abbot of Clairvaux, the celebrated St. Bernard. 

Having each a strength, it is said, of 100,000 men, the two A.D. 1147. 
monarchs marched by Germany and the Lower Danube, at an TheFrecch 

3.mVG fit 

interval of two months between them, without committing irregu- Constauti- 
larities and without meeting obstacles so serious as those of the nople. 
hrst crusade, but still much incommoded and subjected to great 
hardships in the countries they traversed. The Emperor Conrad 
and the Germans first, and then King Louis and the French 
arrived at Constantinople in the course of the summer of 1147. 
Manuel Comnenus, grandson of Alexis Comnenus, was reigninc 
there ; and he behaved towards the crusaders with the same mix- 
ture of caresses and malevolence, promises and perfidy as had 
distinguished his grandfather. " There is no ill turn he did not do 
them," says the historian Nicetas, himself a Greek. Conrad was 
the first to cross into Asia Minor, and, whether it were unskil- 
fulness or treason, the guides with whom he had been supplied by 
Manuel Comnenus led him so badly that, on the 2Sth of October, 
1147, he was surprised and shockingly beaten by the Turks, near 
Iconium. An utter distrust of Greeks grew up amongst the 
French, who had not yet left Constantinople ; and some of their 
chiefs and even one of their prelates, the Bishop of Langres, 
proposed to make, without further delay, an end of it with this 
emperor and empire, so treacherously hostile, and to take Constan- 
stinople in order to march more securely upon Jerusalem. But 
King Louis and the majority of his knights turned a deaf ear; 
accordingly, they continued their march across Asia Minor and 
gained in Phrygia, at the passage of the river Meander, so brilliant Passage of 
a victory over the Turks that, " if such men," says the historian the Mean- 
Nicetas, "abstained from taking Constantinople, one cannot but 
admire their moderation and forbearance." But the success was 
short, and, ere long, dearly paid for. On entering Pisidia, the 
French army split up into two, and afterwards into several 
divisions, which scattered and lost themselves in the defiles of the 
mountains. The Turks waited for them, and attacked them at the 
mouths and from the top of the passes ; before long there was 
nothing but disorder and carnage ; the little band which surrounded 
the king was cut to pieces at his side ; and Louis himself, with his 
back against a rock, defended himself, alone, for some minutes, 
against several Turks, till they, not knowing who he was, drew o^\ 
whereupon he, suddenly throwing himself upon a stray horse, 

•o 



82 History of France. 

rejoined his advanced guard, who believed him dead. The army 

continued their march pell-mell, king, barons, knights, soldiers, and 

pilgrims, uncertain day by day what would become of them on the 

morrow. The Turks harassed them afield ; the towns in which 

there were Greek governors residing refused to receive them ; 

provisions fell short ; arms and baggage were abandoned on the 

road. On arriving in Pamphilia, at Satalia, a little port on the 

Mediterranean, the impossibility of thus proceeding became 

evident ; they were still, by land, forty days' march from Antioch, 

whereas it required but three to get there by sea. Louis embarked 

with his queen, Eleanor, and his principal knights ; and towards 

the end of March, 1148, he arrived at Antioch, having lost more 

than three quarters of his army. 

AD. 1148. ^Raymond of Poitiers, at that time Prince of Antioch, by his 

Differences marriage with Constance, grand-daughter of the great Bohemond of 

'between > 

the king ^^^® ^'^^ crusade, was uncle to the Queen of France, Eleanor of 

of France Aquitaine. He had at heart, beyond every thing, the conquest of 
";" " Aleppo and Csesarea. In this design the King of Prance and 
Eleanor, the crusaders who were still about him might be of real service ; 
and he attempted to win them over. Louis answered that he 
would engage in no enterprise until he had visited the holy places. 
Raymond was impetuous, irritable, and as unreasonable in his 
desires as unfortunate in his undertakings. He had quickly 
acquired great influence over his niece, Queen Eleanor ; and he 
had no difficulty in winning her over to his plans. When the 
king, her husband, spoke to her of approaching departure, she 
emphatically refused, and, to justify her opposition, she declared 
that they could no longer live together, as there was, she asserted, 
a prohibited degree of consanguinity between them. Austere in 
morals, easily jealous, and religiously scrupulous, Louis was for a 
moment on the point of separating from his wife ; but the counsels 
of his chief barons dissuaded him, and, thereupon, taking a sudden 
resolution, he set out from Antioch secretly, by night, carrying off 
the queen almost by force. 
Lonis vn ^" approaching Jerusalem, in the month of April, 1148, 
arrives at Louis VII. saw coming to meet him King Baldwin III., and the 
Jerasalem. pa^jj-jarch and the people, singing, " Blessed be he that cometh in 
the name of the Lord ! " at the same time arrived from Con- 
stantinople the Emperor Conrad, almost alone and in the gnise of 
a simple pilgrim. All the remnant of the crusaders, French and 
German, hurried to join them. They decided upon the siege of 
Sieoe of L>amascus, the most important and the nearest of the Mussulman 
Damascus, princedoms in Syria, and in the early part of June they moved 



Suger.. iSj^ 

tllither with forces incomplete and illunited. Neither the Prince' 
of Antioch nor the Counts of Edessa and Tripolis had been' 
summoned to St. Jean d'Acre ; and Queen Eleanor had not- 
appeared. At the first attack, the ardour of the assailants and the' 
brilliant personal prowess of their chiefs, of the Emperor Conrad' 
amongst others, struck surprise and consternation into the be- 
sieged, who, foreseeing the necessity of abandoning their city, laid' 
across the streets beams, chains, and heaps of stones, to stop the ' 
progress of the conquerors, and give themselves time for flying^ 
with their families and their wealth, by the northern and southern 
gates. But personal interest and secret negotiations befora,long' 
brought into the Christian camp weakness together with discord j '_ 
finally the crusader-sovereigns raised the siege, and returned to 
Jerusalem. The Emperor Conrad, in indignation and confusion, ■ 
set out precipitately to return to Germany. King Louis could not 
make up his mind thus to quit the Holy Land in disgrace and * 
without doing any thing for its deliverance. He prolonged his- 
stay there for more than a year without any thing to show for his '■ 
time and zeal; urged, however, by the repeated entreaties of his 
minister Suger, he at length made up his mind, embarked at 

St. Jean d'Acre at the commencement of July, 1149 ; and dis- . ^ ...^ 

AD 1149 
em.barked in the month of October at the port of St. Gilles, at the louis VIL 

mouth of the Ehone. returns to 

. This preference and this confidence were no more than. Louis VIL ^jj jQgg 

owed to Suger. The Abbot of St. Denis, after having opposed —1163. 

the crusade with a freedom of spirit and a farsightedness ^^^i^.^^? HisTha- 

perhaps, in his times, had, during the king's absence, borne the racter 

weight of government with a political tact, a firmness and a dis- ■ 

interestedness rare in any times. He had upheld the authority of 

absent royalty, kept down the pretensions of vassals, and established 

some degree of order wherever his influence could reach ; he had 

provided for the king's expenses in Palestine by good adminis-' 

tration of the domains and revenues of the crown ; and, lastly, he 

had acquired such renown in Europe, that men came from Italy 

and from England to view the salutary effects of his government, 

and that the name of Solomon of his age was conferred upon him 

by strangers, his contemporaries. With the exception of great 

sovereigns, such as Charlemagne or William the Conqueror, only 

great bishops or learned theologians, and that by their influence in 

the Church, or by their writings, had obtained this European 

reputation; from the ninth to the twelfth century, Suger was the 

first man who attained to it by the sole merit of his political 

conduct, and who offered an example of a minister justly admired, 

for his ability and wisdom, beyond the circle in which he moved.^ 

Q 2 



84 History of France. 

He died in 1152, aged seventy, and "thanking the Almighty," 
says his biographer, " for having taken him to Him, not suddenly 
but little by little, in order to bring him step by step to the rest 
needful for the weary man." It is said that, in his last days and 
when St. Bernard was exhorting him not to think any more save 
only of the heavenly Jerusalem, Suger still expressed to him his 
regret at dying without having succoured the city which was so 
dear to them both. 
CotmcU of Almost at the very moment when Suger was dying, a French 
Beaugency council, assembled at Beaugency, was annulling, on the ground of 
prohibited consanguinity, and with the tacit consent of the two 
persons most concerned, the marriage of Louis VII. and Eleanor of 
Aquitaine. Some months afterwards, at Whitsuntide in the 
same year, Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy and Count of 
Anjou, espoused Eleanor, thus adding to his already great pos- 
sessions Poitou and Aquitaine, and becoming, in France, a vassal 
more powerful than the king his suzerain. Twenty months later, 
in 1154, at the death of King Stephen, Henry Plantagenet became 
King of England ; and thus there was a recurrence, in an aggravated 
form, of the position which had been filled by William the Con- 
queror, and which was the first cause of rivalry between France 
and England and of the consequent struggles of considerably more 
than a century's duration. 
A.D. 1153. Little more than a year after Suger, on the 20th of April, 1153, 
St.Beniard. ^^- Bernard died also. The two great men, of whom one had 
excited and the other opposed the second crusade, disappeared to- 
gether from the theatre of the world. The crusade had completely 
failed. After a lapse of scarce forty years, a third crusade began. 
A.B. 1187. I^ ^^ course of the year 1187, Europe suddenly heard tale upon 
Battle of tale about the repeated disasters of the Christians in Asia. On 
Tibenas. ^^ j^^ ^^ May, the two religious and warlike orders which had 
been founded in the East for the defence of Christendom, the 
Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem and the Templars, lost, at 
a brush in Galilee, 500 of their bravest knights. On the 3rd and 
4th of July, near Tiberias, a Christian army was surrounded by 
the Saracens, and also, ere long, by the fire which Saladin had 
Jerusalem ordered to be set to the dry grass which covered the plain. Four 
capitulates (j^ys after, on the 8th of Julj^, 1187, Saladin took possession of 
St. Jean d'Acre, and, on the 4th September following, of Ascalon. 
Finally, on the 18th of September, he laid siege to Jerusalem, 
■wherein refuge had been sought by a multitude of Christian 
families driven from their homes by the ravages of the infidels 
throughout Palestine ; and the Holy City contained at this time, 
it is said, nearly 100,000 Christians. The capitulation soon 



The Kings of France and of England take the Cross. 85 

followed, and all Christians, however, with the exception of 
Greeks, and Syrians, had orders to leave Jerusalem within 
four days. 

The news of this terrible event, spreading through Europe, caused 
amongst all classes there, high and low, a deep feeling of sorrow, 
anger, disquietude, and shame. After the capture of Jerusalem by a.D 1188. 
Saladin, the Christians of the East, in their distress, sent to the ^ ^®T ''^,^" 

BfliUS IS Q'G'' 

"West their most eloquent prelate and gravest historian William, termined 

archbishop of Tyre, who, fifteen years before, in the reign ofoQ. 

Baldwin IV., had been Chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem. 

He, accompanied by a legate of Pope Gregory VIII., scoured Italy, 

France, and Germany, recounting every where the miseries of the 

Holy Land, and imploring the aid of all Christian princes and 

.peoples, whatever might be their own position of affairs and their 

own quarrels in Europe. At a parliament assembled at Gisors, on 

the 21st of January, 1188, and at a diet convoked at Mayence ou 

the 27th of March following, he so powerfully affected the knight- » 

hood of France, England, and Germany, that the three sovereigns 

of these three States, Philip Augustus, Richard Coeur de Lion, and 

Frederick Barbarossa, engaged with acclamation in a new crusade. 

The eldest, Frederick Barbarossa, was first ready to plunge amongst 

the perils of the crusade. Starting from Ratisbonne about Christmas, A.D. 1189. 

1189, with an army of 150,000 men, he traversed the Greek em- Barbairossa 

pire and Asia Minor, defeated the Sultan of Iconium, passed the starts first. 

first defiles of Taurus, and seemed to be approaching the object of 

his voyage Avlien, on the 10th of June, 1190, having arrived at the 

borders of the Selef, a small river which throws itself into the 

Mediterranean close to Seleucia, he determined to cross it by fording, 

was seized with a chill and, according to some, drowned before his 

peo[ lie's eyes, but, according to others, carried dying to Seleucia, 

where he expired. His young son Conrad, duke of Suabia, 

was not equal to taking the command of such an army ; and it 

broke up. 

On the 24th of June, 1190, Philip Augustus went and took the a.D. 1190. 

oriflamme at St. Denis, on his way to Vezelai, where he had ap- ^^^i'lP 

. . Augustus 

pointed to meet Richard, and whence the two kings, in fact, set and 

out, on the 4th of July, to embark with their troops, Philip at Richard 

T olio V7 

Genoa, and Richard at Marseilles. They had agreed to touch 
nowhere until they reached Sicily, where Philip was the first to 
arrive, on the 16th of September; and Richard was eight days 
later. But, instead of simply touching, they passed ai- Messina all 
the autumn of 1190 and all the winter of 1190-91, no longer • 

seeming to think of any thing but quarrelling and amusing them- 



B6 History of France. 

f*elves. Kor were grounds for quarrel or opportunities for amiise- 
'ments far to seek. Eicliard, in spite of his promise, was unwilling 
to marry the Princess Alice, Philip's sister ; and Philip, after 
lively discussion, would not agree to give him back his word, save 
"in consideration of a sum of 10,000 silver marks, whereof he 
shall pay us 3000 at the feast of All Saints, and year by year in. 
Buccession, at this same feast." ^Naturally independent, and dis- 
posed to act, on every occasion, according to his own ideas, Philip 
resolved, not to break with Eichard, but to divide their commands, 
and separate their fortunes. On the approach of spring, 1191, he 
announced to him that the time had arrived for continuing their 
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and that, as for himself, he was quite 
ready to set out. "I am not ready," said Eichard; "and I cannot 
depart before the middle of August." Philip, after some discus- 
sion, set out alone, with his army, on the 30th of March, and oh 
the 14th of April arrived before St. Jean dAcre. This important 
place, of which Saladin had made himself master nearly four years 
before, was being besieged by the last King of Jerusalem, Guy de 
Lusignan, at the head of the Christians of Palestine, and by a 
multitude of crusaders, Genoese, Danish, Flemish, and German 
who had flocked freely to the enterprise. A strong and valiant 
Mussulman garrison was defending St. Jean d'Acre. Saladin 
manoeuvred incessantly for its relief, and several battles had already 
been fought beneath the walls. When the King of France arrived, 
•'he was received by the Christians besieging," say the chronicles 
of St. Denis, "with supreme joy, as if he were an angel come 
' down from heaven." Philip set vigorously to work to push on the 
'siege; but, at his departure he had promised Eichard not to deliver 
the grand assault until they had formed a junction before the place 
with all their forces. Eichard, who had set out from Messina at 
the beginning of May, though he had said that he would not be 
ready till August, lingered again on the way to reduce the island 
of Cyprus, and to celebrate there his marriage with Berengaria of 
"^" Navarre, in lieu of Alice of France. At last he arrived, on the 

:r ; 7th of June, before St. Jean d'Acre; and several assaults in suc- 

cession were made on the place with equal determination on the 
A.i).. 1191 part of the besiegers and the besieged. On the 13th of July 1191, 
Taking of y^ spite of the energetic resistance offered by the garrison, which 
d'Acre. defended itself "as a lion defends his blood-stained den," St. Jean 
d'Acre surrendered. The terms of capitulation stated that 200,000 
pieces of gold should be paid to the chiefs of the Christian army : 
that 1600 prisoners and the wood of the true cross should be given 
up tf them ; and that the garrison as well as all the people of thie 



Restdts of the Crusades. 8/ 

fdwri should remain in the conquerors' po wet, pending full exefcn- 
tion of the treaty. 

Philip Augustus returned to France after the capture of St. Jean A.D. 1191. 
d'Acre, because he considered the ultimate success of the crusade Augustus 
impossible, and his return necessary for the interests of France and returns to 
for his own. He was right in thus thinking and acting ; and King ^*'^*^- 
Eichard, when insultingly reproaching him for it, did not foresee 
that a year later he would himself be doing the same thing, and 
would give up the crusade without having obtained any thing moro 
for Christendom except fresh reverses. 

On the 31st of July, 1191, Philip, leaving with the army of the 

crusaders, 10,000 foot and 500 knights, under the command pf 

Duke Hugh of Burgundy, who had orders to obey King Eichard, 

set sail for France; and, a few days after Christmas in the same 

year, landed in his kingdom, and forthwith resumed, at Fontaine- 

bleau according to some, and at Paris according to others, the Eesults , of 

regular direction of his government. Thus ended the third crusade, *'^^ ^^f^ 

- crusade, 

undertaken by the three greatest sovereigns and the three greatest ■ 

armies of Christian Europe, and with the loudly proclaimed objept v 

of retaking Jerusalem from the infidels and re-establishing a king 
over the sepulchre of Jesus Christ. The Emperor Frederick Bar- 
barossa perished in it before he had trodden the soil of Palestine. 
King Philip Augustus retired from it voluntarily, so soon as ex- 
perience had foreshadowed to him the impossibility of success. 
. King Eichard abandoned it perforce, after having exhausted upon 
it his heroism and his knightly pride. The three armies, at the 
moment of departure from Europe, amounted, according to the 
historians of the time, to 500,000 or 600,000 men, of whom 
scarcely 100,000 returned ; and the only result of the third crusade 
was to leave as head over all the most beautiful provinces of Mus- 
sulman Asia and Africa, Saladin, the most illustrious and most ablo 
chieftain, in war and in politics, that Islamry had produced since 
Mahomet. 

From the end of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth Eemainirg 
century, between the crusade of Philip Augustus and that of Saint f^^^^V 
Louis, it is usual to count three crusades, over which we will not the Holy 
linger. Two of these crusades, one, from 1195 to 1198, under ^^^id. 
Henry VI., emperor of Germany, and the other, from 1216 to 1240, 
under the Emperor Frederick II. and Andrew II., king of Hungary, 
are unconnected with France and almost exclusively German, or, in 
origin and range, confined to Eastern Europe. They led, in Syria, 
Palestine, and Egypt, to wars, negotiations, and manifold compli- 
cations ; Jerusalem fell once more, for a while, into the hands of 



8S History of France. 

the Christians; and there, on the 18th of March, 1229, in the 
church of the Resurrection, the Emperor Frederick II., at that time 
excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX., placed with his own hands 
the royal crown upon his head. But these events, confused, dis- 
connected and short-lived as ihey were, did not produce in the 
West, and especially in France, any considerable reverberation, 
and did not exercise upon the relative situations of Europe and 
Asia, of Christendom and Islamry, any really historical influence. 

The expedition which led to the conquest of Constantinople and 
to the foundation (1204) of a Latin empire in the East so far 
interests Frenchmen, that it was a Frenchman, Geoffrey de Ville- 
hardouin, seneschal of Theobald III., count of Champagne, who, 
after having been one of the chief actors in it, wrote the history 
of it ; and his work, strictly historical as to facts, and admirably 
epic in description of character and warmth of colouring, is one of 
the earliest and finest monuments of French literatare. 

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, whilst the enter- 
prises which were still called crusades were becoming more and 
more degenerate in character and potency, there was born in France, 
on the 25th of April, 1215, not merely the prince, but the man 
who was to be the most worthy representative and the most de- 
voted slave of that religious and moral passion which had inspired 
the crusades. Louis IX., though born to the purple, a powerful 
king, a valiant warrior, a splendid knight, and an object of reverence 
to all those who at a distance observed his life, and of affection to 
all those who approached his person, was neither biassed nor in- 
toxicated by any such human glories and delights ; neither in his 
thoughts nor in his conduct did they ever occujDy the foremost 
place ; before all and above all he wished to be, and was indeed, a 
Christian, a true Christian, guided and governed by the idea and the 
resolve of defending the Christian faith and fulfilling the Christian 
law. Had he been born in the most lowly condition, as the world 
holds, or, as religion, the most commanding ; had he been ol)scure, 
needy, a priest, a monk, or a hermit, he could not have been more 
constantly and more zealously filled with the desire of living as a 
faithful servant of Jesus Christ, and of ensuring, by pious obedience 
to God here, the salvation of his soul hereafter. This is the peculiar 
and original characteristic of St. Louis, and a fact rare and probably 
unique in the history of kings. (He was canonized on the 11th of 
August, 1297 ; and during twenty- four years nine successive popes 
had prosecuted the customary inquiries as to his faith and life.) 

In the first years of his government, when he had reached his 
majority, there was nothing to show that the idea of the crusade 



Louh IX. 89 

occupied Louis IX:*s mind; and it was only in 1239, wlien he 
was now four and twentj'^, that it showed itself vividly in him. 
Some of his principal vassals, the Counts of Champagne, Brittany, 
and Macon had raised an army of crusaders, and were getting 
ready to start for Palestine ; and the king was not contented with 
giving them encouragement, but "he desired that Amaury de 
Montfort, his constable, should, in his name, serve Jesus Christ in 
this war ; and for that reason he gave his arms and assigned to 
him per day a sum of money for which Amaury thanked him on 
his knees, that is, did him homage, according to the usage of those 
times. And the crusaders wore mighty pleased to have this lord 
with them." 

Five years afterwards, at the close of 1244, Louis fell seriously Illness of 
ill at Pontoise, and having recovered, took the cross in consequence 
of a vow he had made to that effect. The crusades, however, 
although they still remained an object of religious and knightly 
aspiration, were from the political point of view decried ; and, 
without daring to say so, many men of weight, lay or ecclesiastical, 
had no desire to take part in them. Under the influence of this 
public feeling, tiniiilly exhibited but seriously cherished, Louis con- 
tinued, for three years, to apply himself to the interior concerns of 
his kingdom and to his relations with the European powers, as if 
he had no other idea. At last, in June, 1248, after having received 
at St. Denis, together with the oriflamme, the scrip and staff of a 
pilgrim, he took leave, at Corbeil or Cluny, of his mother, Queen A.D. 1248. 
Blanche, whom he left regent during his absence, with the fullest f^j, ^^^ 
powers. "Most sweet fair son," said she, embracing him, " fair Crusade, 
tender son, I shall never see you more ; full well my heart assures 
me." He took with him Queen Marguerite of Provence, his wife, 
who had declared that she would never part from him. On arriving 
in the early part of August at Aigues-Mortes, he found assembled 
there a fleet of thirty-eight vessels with a certain number of trans- 
port-ships which he had hired from the republic of Genoa ; and 
they were to convey to the East the troops and personal retinue of 
the king himself. The number of these vessels proves that Louis 
was far from bringing one of those vast armies Avith which the first 
crusades had been familiar ; it even appears that he had been 
careful to get rid of such mobs, for, before embarking, he sent away 
nearly ten thousand bowmen, Genoese, Venetian, Pisan, and even 
French, whom he had at first engaged, and of whom, after inspection, 
he desired nothing further. The sixth crusade was the personal 
achievement of St. Louis, not the offspring of a popular movement, 
and he carried it out with a picked army, furnished by the feudal 



90 History of France. 

cliivalry and by the religious and military orders dedicated to tlie 
service of the Holy Land. 
Arrives at The Isle of Cyprus was the trysting-place appointed for all the 
forces of the expedition. Louis arrived there on the 12th of 
September, 1248, and reckoned upon remaining there only a few- 
days ; for it was Egypt that he was in a hurry to reach. The 
French, however, left the island only in May, 1249, and, in spite 
of violent gales of wind, which dispersed a large number of vessels, 
A.D. 1249. ^^^y arrived on the 4th of June before Damietta, which was taken 
Lands at without the least difficulty. St. Louis and the crusaders unfor- 
tunately committed the same fault there as in the Isle of Cyprus : 
they halted there for an indefinite time. They were expecting 
fresh crusaders ; and they spent the time of expectation in 
quarrelling over the partition of the booty taken in the city. 

At length, on the 20th of IlTovember, 1249, after more than five 
months' inactivity at Damietta, the crusaders put themselves once 
more in motion, with the determination of marching upon Babylon, 
that outskirt of Cairo, now called Old Cairo, which the greater 
part of them, in their ignorance, mistook for the real Babylon, and 
where they flattered themselves they would find immense riches 
and avenge the olden sufferings of the Hebrew captives. The 
Mussulmans had found time to recover from their first fright and 
A.D. 1250. to organize, at all points, a vigorous resistance. On the 8th of 
Battle^of j'gi^p^ary, 1250, a battle took place twenty leagues from Damietta, 
at Mansourah {the city of victory), on the right bank of the Nile. 
The king's brother, Robert, count of Artois, marched with the 
vanguard, and obtained an early success ; elated by this result, he 
rushed forward into the town, where he found the Mussulmans 
numerous and perfectly rallied ; in a few moments the count of 
Artois fell pierced with wounds, and more than 300 knights of his 
train, the same number of English, together with their leader 
William Longsword, and 280 Templars, paid with their lives for 
the senseless ardour of the French prince. 

The king hurried up in all haste to the aid of his brother ; but 
he had scarcely arrived, and as yet knew nothing of his brother's 
fate, when he himself engaged so impetuously in the battle that he 
was on the point of being taken prisoner by six Saracens who had 
already seized the reins of his horse. He was defending bin) self 
vi"-orously with his sword when several of his knights came up 
with him and set him free. He asked one of them if he had any 
news of his brother ; and the other answered, " Certainly I have 
news of him : for I am sure that he is now in Paradise." *' Praised 
be God ! " answered the king, with a tear or two, and went on with 




SIRE DE JOINVILLE 



Louis IX. a prisoner in the East. <jH 

\ "bis fighting. The battle-field was left that day to the crusaders j 
but they were not allowed to occupy it as conquerors, for three 
days afterwards, on the 11th of February, 1250, the camp of St 
Louis was assailed by clouds of Saracens, horse and foot, Mame 
lukes and Bedouins. All surprise had vanished ; the Mussulman 
measured at a glance the numbers of the Christians, and attacked 
them in full assurance of success, whatever heroism they might 
display ; and the crusaders themselves indulged in no more self 
illusion, and thought only of defending themselves. An attempt 
was made by the king of France to negociate with the enemy, but 
to no purpose, and on the 5th of April, 1250, the crusaders de- 
cided upon retreating. 

This was the most deplorable 'scene of a deplorable drama; and, Eetreat . 
at the same time it was, for the king, an occasion for displaying, in ^^^^^ 
their most sublime and most attractive traits, all the virtues of the 
Christian. Whilst sickness and famine were devastating the camp, 
Louis made himself visitor, physician, and comforter ; and his 
presence and his words exercised upon the worst cases a searching 
influence. But neither his courage nor his servants' devotion were 
enough to ensure success even to the retreat ; a truce was about to 
be concluded, and the Mussulman was taking off his ring from his 
finger as a pledge that he would observe it. " But during this," 
says Joinville, " there took place a great mishap. A traitor of a 
sergeant, whose name was Marcel, began calling to our people, 

' Sirs knights, surrender, for such is the king's command : cause ^\ ^°^" , 

i3risoii6r oX 
not the king's death.' All thought that it was the king's com- ^^^ jji^g 

mand ; and they gave up their swords to the Saracens." Being sulmans. 
forthwith declared prisoners, the king and all the rear-guard were 
removed to Mansourah ; the king by boat ; and his two brothers, 
the Counts of Anjou and Poitiers, and all the other crusaders, 
drawn up in a body and shackled, followed on foot on the river- 
bank. The advance-guard and all the rest of the army soon met 
the same fate. 

Ten thousand prisoners — this was all that remained of the 
crusade that had started eighteen months before from Aigues- 
Mortes. JSTevertheless the lofty bearing and the piety of the king 
still inspired the Mussulmans with great respect. A negotiation 
was opened between him and the Sultan Malek-Moaddam, who, 
having previously freed him from his chains, had him treated with 
a certain magnificence ; he perceived that he had to do with an in- 
domitable spirit ; and he did not insist any longer upon more than 
the surrender of Damietta and on a ransom of 500,000 livres (that 
is, about 10,132,000 francs, or 405,280?., of modern money. "I 



92 History of France. 

will pay willingly 500,000 livres for the deliverance of my people,'' 
said Louis, " and I will give up Damietta for the deliverance of my 
own person, for I am not a man who ought to be bought and sold 
for money." "By my faith," said the sultan, " the Frank is liberal 
not to have haggled about so large a sum. Go tell him that I will 
give him 100,000 livres to help towards paying the ransom." On the 
7th of May, 1250, the faithful friend and companion of Saint Louis, 
Geoffrey de Sargines, gave up to the emirs the keys of Daraietta ; 
and the Mussulmans entered in tumultuously. The king was 
awaiting aboard his ship for the payment which his people were to 
make for the release of his brother, the Count of Poitiers ; and 
when he saw approaching a bark on which he recognised his 
St Louis brother, "Light up ; light up !" lie cried instantly to his sailors ; 
leaves which was the signal agreed upon for setting out. And leaving 
Pahsstine'^ forthwith the coast of Egypt, the fleet which bore the remains of 
the Christian army made sail for the shores of Palestine. 

The king, having arrived at St. Jean d'Acre on the 14th of May, 
1250, accepted, without shrinking, the trial imposed upon him by 
his unfortunate situation. Twice he believed he was on the point 
of accomplishing his desire — the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre 
from the Mussulmans, and the re-establishment of the kingdom of 
Jerusalem. Towards the end of 1250, and again, in 1252, the 
Sultan of Aleppo and Damascus, and the Emirs of Egypt, being 
engaged in a violent struggle, made offers to him, by turns, of 
restoring the kingdom of Jerusalem if he would form an active 
alliance with one or the other party against its enemies. Louis 
sought means of accepting either of these offers without neglecting 
liis previous engagements, and without compromising the fate of 
the Christians still prisoners in Egypt, or living in the territories of 
Aleppo and Damascus ; but, during the negotiations entered upon 
with a view to this end, the Mussulmans of Syria and Egypt sus- 
pended their differences, and made common cause against the 
remnants of the Christian crusaders ; and all hope of re-entering 
Jerusalem by these means vanished away. Another time, the 
Sultan of Damascus, touched by Louis' pious perseverance, had 
word sent to him that he, if he wished, could go on a pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem and should find himself in perfect safety. " The king," 
says Joinville, " held a great council ; and none urged him to go. 
It was shown unto him that if he, who was the greatest king in 
Christendom, performed his pilgrimage without delivering the Holy 
City from the enemies of God, all the other kings and other pilgrims 
who came after him would hold themselves content with doing just 
as much, and would trouble themselves no more about the de- 



State of' the Christians in the East. 93 

liverance of Jerusalem." Ricliard Coeur de Lion, sixty years 
before, had refused to cast even a look upon Jerusalem, when he 
was unable to deliver her from her enemies. Louis, just as 
Richard had, refused the incomplete satisfaction which had been 
offered him, and for nearly four years, spent by him on the coasts 
of Palestine and Syria since his departure from Damietta, from 
1250 to 1254, he expended, in small works of piety, sympathy, 
protection, and care for the future of the Christian populations in 
Asia, his time, his strength, his pecuniary resources, and the ardour 
of a soul which could not remain idly abandoned to sorrowing over 
great desires unsatisfied. 

At the commencement of the year 1253, at Sidon, the ramparts A.D. 1252. 
of which he was engaged in repairing, he heard that his mother, ?,^^*''\ °^ - 
Queen Blanche, had died at Paris on the 27th of November, 1252. castile. 
This melancholy news induced him to return to Europe ; he em- 
barked at St. Jean d' Acre, on the 24th of April, 1254, carrying A.D. 1254. 
away with him, on thirteen vessels, large and small, Queen ^*- J^o^^s 
Marguerite, his children, his personal retinue, and his own more Palestine, 
immediate men-at-arms, and leaving the Christians of Syria, for 
their protection in his name, a hundred knights under the orders of 
Geoffrey de Sargines, that comrade of his in whose bravery and 
pious fealty he had the most entire confidence. After two months 
and a half at sea, the king and his fleet arrived, on the 8th of July, 
1254, off the port of Hyeres, where he landed, and, passing slowly 
through France, he made his solemn entry into Paris on the 7th of 
September, 1254. 

For seven years after his return to ifrance, from 1254 to 1261, State of 
Louis seemed to think no more about them, and there is nothing |.ja,ns in 
to show that he spoke of them even to his most intimate confidants ; the East, 
but, in spite of his apparent calmness, he was living, so far as they 
were concerned, in a continual ferment of imagination and internal 
fever, ever flattering himself that some favourable circumstance 
would call him back to his interrupted work. And he had reason 
to believe that circumstances were responsive to his wishes. The 
Christians of Palestine and Syria were a prey to perils and evils 
which became more pressing every day ; the cross was being 
humbled at one time before the Tartars of Tchingis-Khan, at 
another before the Mussulmans of Egypt ; Pope Urban was calling 
\ipon the King of France ; and Geoffrey de Sargines, the heroic 
representative whom Louis had left in St. Jean d'Acre, at the 
head of a small garrison, was writing to him that ruin was im- 
minent and speedy succour indispensable to prevent it. In 12bl, 



m 



History of France^ 



A.D. 1270. 
St Louis 
starts for 
another 
crusade. 



Lands at 
Tunis. 



Louis held, at Paris, a parliament at which, without any talk of a 
new crusade, measures were taken which revealed an idea of it : 
there were decrees for fasts and prayers on behalf of the Christians 
of the East, and for frequent and earnest military drill. In 1263, 
the crusade was openly preached ; taxes were levied, even on the 
clergy, for the purpose of contributing towards it ; and princes and 
barons bound themselves to take part in it. Louis was all approval 
and encouragement, without declaring his own intention. In 1267, 
a parliament was convoked at Paris. The king, at first, conversed 
discreetly with some of his barons about the new plan of crusade ; 
and then, suddenly, having had the precious relics deposited in the 
Holy Chapel set before the eyes of the assembly, he opened the 
session by ardently exhorting those present " to avenge the insult 
which had so long been offered to the Saviour in the Holy Land, 
and to recover the Christian heritage possessed, for our sins, by the 
infidels." Next year, on the 9th February, 1268, at a new 
parliament assembled at Paris, the king took an oath to start in the 
month of May, 1270. 

Saint Louis left Paris on the 16th of March, 1270, a sick man 
almost already, but with soul content, and probably the only one 
without misgiving in the midst of all his comrades. It was once 
more at AiguesMortes that he went to embark. All was as yet 
dark and undecided as to the plan of the expedition. At last, on 
the 2nd of July, 1270, he set sail without any one's knowing and 
without the king's telling any one whither they were going. It 
was only in Sardinia, after four days' halt at Cagliari, that Louis 
announced to the chiefs of the crusade, assembled aboard his ship 
the Mountjoy, that he was making for Tunis, and that their 
Christian work would commence there. The King of Tunis 
(as he was then called), Mohammed Mostanser, had for some time 
been talking of his desire to become a Christian, if he could be 
efficiently protected against the seditions of his subjects. Louis 
welcomed with transport the prospect of Mussulman conversions. 
" Ah ! " he cried, " if I could only see myself the gossip and sponsor 
of so great a godson ! " 

But dn the 17th of July, when the fleet arrived before Tunis, 
the admiral, Florent de Varennes, probably without the king's 
orders, and with that want of reflection which was conspicuous at 
each step of the enterprise, immediately took possession of the 
harbour and of some Tunisian vessels as prize, and sent word to 
the king " that he had only to support him and that the dis- 
embarcation of the troops might be effected in perfect safety."- 



' Death of Saint Louis. 95 

Thus war was commenced at the very first moment against the 
Mussulman prince whom there had been a promise of seeing before 
long a Christian. 

At the end of a fortnight, after some fights between the Tu- 
nisians and the crusaders, so much political and military blindness 
produced its natural consequences. On the 3rd of August Louis His illness. 
was attacked by the epidemic fever, and obliged to keep his bed 
in his tent ; the illness soon took an unfavourable turn, and no 
hopes of recovery could be entertained. It was announced to 
him, on the 24th of August, that envoys from the Emperor 
Michael Palseologus had landed at Cape Carthage, with orders to 
demand his intervention with his brother Charles, king of Sicily, 
to deter him from making war on the but lately re-established 
Greek empire. Louis summoned all his strength to receive them 
in his tent, in the presence of certain of his counsellors, who were 
uneasy at the fatigue he was imposing upon himself. ** I promise 
you, if I live," said he to the envoys, " to co-operate, so far as I 
may be able, in what your master demands of me ; meanwhile, I 
exhort you to have patience, and be of good courage." This was 
his last political act, and his last concern with the aff'airs of the 
world ; henceforth he was occupied only with pious effusions 
which had a bearing at one time on his hopes for his soul, at 
another on those Christian interests which had been so dear to 
him all his life. He kept repeating his customary orisons in a low 
voice ; and he was heard murmuring these broken words : " Fair 
Sir God, have mercy on this people that bideth here, and bring 
them back to their own land ! Let them not fall into the hands of 
their enemies, and let them not be constrained to deny Thy name ! " 
And at the same time that he thus expressed his sad reflections 
upon the situation in which he was leaving his army and his 
people, he cried from time to time, as he raised himself on his bed, 
" Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! we will go up to Jerusalem ! " During the 
night of the 24th-25th of August he ceased to speak, all the time 
continuing to show that he was in full possession of his senses; 
he insisted upon receiving extreme unction out of bed, and lying 
upon a coarse sack- cloth covered with cinders, with the cross 
before him ; and on Monday, the 25th of August, 1270, at 3 p.m., 
he departed in peace, whilst uttering these his last words : " Father, J'^^'^g^JJ" 
after the example of the Divine Master, into Thy hands I commend (^ng. 26). 
my spirit i " 




CHAPTEE lY. 



THE KINGSHIP, THE COMMONERS AND THE THIRD ESTATE. 



Charac- 



... .At the first glance, two facts strike us in the history of the king- 

l«62*lSllCS 01 , , , __ 1 * 1 t 

the French ship m France. It was in France that it aaopted soonest and most 
kingship, persistently maintained its fundamental pi'inciple, heredity ; only 
in France was there, at any time during eight centuries, but a single 
king and a single line of kings. Unity and heredity, those two 
essential principles of monarchy, have been the invariable charac- 
teristics of the kingship in France. 

A second fact, less apparent and less remarkable, but, never- 
theless, not without importance or without effect upon the history 
of the kingship in France, is the extreme varietj" of character, of 
faculties, of intellectual and moral bent, of policy and personal 
conduct amongst the French kings. Absolute monarchical power 
in France was, almost in every successive reign, singularly modi- 
fied, being at one time aggravated and at another alleviated accord- 
ing to the ideas, sentiments, morals, and spontaneous instincts of 
the monarchs. Nowhere else, throughout the great European 
monarchies, has the difference between kingly personages exercised 
BO much influence on government and national condition. In that 
country the free action of individuals has filled a prominent place 
and taken a prominent part in the course of events. 

It has been shown how insignificant and inert, as sovereigns, 
were the first three successors of Hugh Capet. The goodness to 
his people displayed by King Robert was the only kingly trait 



Royal domains. 9;^ 

which, during that period, deserved to leave a trace in history. 
Tlie kingship appeared once more with the attributes of energy 
and efficiency on the accession of Louis VI., son of Philip I. 
Brought up in the monastery of St. Denis, he had the good fortune 
to find there a fellow-student capable of becoming a king's coun- 
sellor, Suger, a child born at St. Denis, of obscure parentage, and 
three or four years younger than Prince Louis, had been brought up 
for charity's sake in the abbey, and the Abbot Adam, who had 
perceived his natural abilities, had taken pains to develope them. 
A bond of esteem and mutual friendship was formed between the 
two young people, both of whom were disposed to earnest thought 
and earnest living; and when, in 1108, Louis ascended the throne, 
the monk Suger became his adviser whilst remaining his friend. 

A very small kingdom, was at that time the domain belonging 
properly and directly to the King of France. Ile-de-France, strictly 
so called, and a part of Orleanness (I'Orleanais), pretty nearly the 
five departments of the Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Oise 
and Loiret, besides, through recent acquisition, Prencb Yexin 
(which bordered on the Ile-de-France and had for its chief place 
Pontoise, being separated by the little River Epte from N^orman 
Vexin, of which Rouen was the capital), half the countship of Sens 
and the countship of Bourges — such was the whole of its extent. 
But this limited State was as liable to agitation, and often as 
troublous and as toilsome to govern as the very greatest of modern 
States. It was full of petty lords, almost sovereigns in their own 
estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly 
suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains, seVeral neigh- 
bours more powerful than himself in the extent and population of 
their States. But lord and peasant, layman and ecclesiastic, castle 
and country and the churches of France were not long discovering, 
that, if the kingdom was small, it had verily a king. Louis did 
not direct to a distance from home his ambition and his efforts ; it 
was within his own dominion, to check the violence of the strong 
against the weak, to put a stop to the quarrels of the strong amongst 
themselves, to make an end, in France at least, of unrighteousness 
and devastation, and to establish there some sort of order and some 
sort of justice, that he displayed his energy and his perseverance. 
Sometimes, when the people and their habitual protectors, the 
bishops, invoked his aid, Louis would carry his arms beyond his 
own dominions, by sole right of justice and kingship. "It is 
known," says Suger, " that kings have long hands." 

Into his relations with his two powerful neighbours, the King "^^on"^["tIj 
England, duke of Normandy, and the Emperor of Germany, Louis hi* neigh- 

}£ bouis. 



qS History of France, 

the Fat (such was his surname) introduced the same watchfulness, 
the same firmness, and, at need, the same warlike energy, whilst 
observing the same moderation and the same policy of holding aloof 
from all turbulent or indiscreet ambition, adjusting his pretensions 
to his power, and being more concerned to govern his kingdom 
efficiently than to add to it by conquest. Twice, in 1109 and in 
1116, he had war in Normandy with Henry I., king of England, 
and he therein was guilty of certain temerities resulting in a reverse, 
which he hastened to repair during a vigorous prosecution of the 
campaign j but, when once his honour Avas satisfied, he showed a 
ready inclination for the peace which the pope, Calixtus II., in 
council at Rome, succeeded in establishing between the two rivals. 
The war with the Emperor of Germany, Henry Y., in 1124, 
appeared, at the first blush, a more serious matter. The emperor 
had raised a numerous army of Lorrainers, Allemannians, Bavarians, 
Suabians, and Saxons, and was threatening the very city of Rheims 
with instant attack. Louis hastened to put himself in position ; 
he went and took solemnly, at the altar of St. Denis, the banner of 
that patron of the kingdom, and flew with a mere handful of men 
to confront the enemy, and parry the first blow, calling on the 
whole of France to follow him. France summoned the flower of 
her chivalry ; and at the news of this mighty host, and of the 
ardour with which they were animated, the Emperor Henry V. 
advanced no farther, and, before long, " marching, under some pre- 
text, towards other places, he preferred the shame of retreating like 
a coward to the risk of exposing his empire and himself to certain 
destruction. After this victory, which was more than as great as 
a triumph on the field of battle, the French returned every one to 
their homes." 

The three elements which contributed to the formation and 
character of the kingship in France, the German element, the 
Eoman element, and the Christian element, appear in conjunction 
A D 1137. i^ 'the reign of Louis the Fat. In his last days he found great 
Marriage cause for rejoicing as a father. "William YIL, duke of Aquitaine, 
theYounff h^^' ^"^^^^ death, entrusted to him the guardianship of his daughter 
Eleanor, heiress of all his dominions, that is to say, of Poitou, of 
Saintonge, of Gascony, and of the Basque country, the most beau- 
tiful provinces of the south-west of France from the lower Loire to 
the Pyrenees. A marriage between Eleanor and Louis the Young, 
already sharing his father's throne, was soon concluded ; it took 
place at Bordeaux, at the end of July, 1137, and on the 8th of 
August following, Louis the Young, on his way back to Paris, was 
crowned at Poitiers as duke of Aquitaine. He there learned 



Philip Av.gustus. 99 

that the king his father had lately died, on the 1st of August. 
Louis the Fat was far from foreseeing the deplorable issues of the 
marriage which he regarded as one of the blessings of his reign. 

In spite of its long duration of forty-three years, the reign of Barren- 
Louis VII. called ike Younq, was a period barren of events and ?P^ ?^ 

Ills r6i&ii 
of persons worthy of keeping a place in history. We have already 

had the story of this king's unfortunate crusade, the commencement 
at Antioch of his imbroglio with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 
and the subsequent divorce. A petty war or a sullen strife be- 
tween the Kings of France and England, petty quarrels of Louis 
with, some of the great lords of his kingdom, certain rigorous 
measures against certain districts in travail of local liberties, the 
first bubblings of that religious fermentation which resulted before 
long, in the south of France, in the crusade against the Albigensians 
— such were the facts which went to make up with somewhat of 
insipidity the annals of this reign. So long as Suger lived the 
kingship preserved, at home, the wisdom which it had been accus- 
tomed to displaj'^, and abroad the respect it had acquired under 
Louis the Fat ; but at the death of Sager it went on languishing 
and declining without encountering any great obstacles. It was 
reserved for Louis the Young's son, Philip Augustus, to open for 
France and for the kingship in France a new era of strength and 
progress. 

Philip II., to whom history has preserved the name of Philip a.D. 1180 
Augustus, given him by his contemporaries, 'had shared the crown, —1223. 
been anointed, and taken to wife Isabel of Hainault', a year before Augastus. 
the death of Louis VII. put him in possession of the kingdomi 
He was as yet only fifteen, and his father, by his will, had left 
him under the guidance of Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, as 
regent, and of Robert Clement, marshal of France, as governor. 
But Philip, though he began his reign under this double influence, 
soon let it be seen that he intended to reign by himself, and to 
reign with vigour ; it was not granted to Philip Augustus to re- character 
suscitate the Prankish empire of Charlemagne, a work impossible of his 
for him or any one whatsoever in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
turies ; but he made the extension and territorial construction of 
the kingdom of France the chief aim of his life, and in that work 
he was successful. Out of the fort^'-three years of his reign, 
twenty-six at the least were war-years, devoted to that very pur- 
pose. During the first six, it was with some of his great French 
vassals, the Count of Champagne, the Duke of Burgundy, and 
even the' Count of Flanders, sometime regent, that Philip had to 
do battle, for they all sought to profit by his minority so as to 

H 2 



lOO 



History of France. 



make themselves independent and aggrandize themselves at the 
expense of the crown ; but, once in possession of the personal 
power as well as the title of king, it was, from 1187 to 1216, 
against three successive kings of England, Henry II., Eichard 
Coeur de Lion, and John Lackland, masters of the most beautiful 
provinces of France, that Philip directed his persistent efforts. 
They were in respect of power, of political capacity and military 
popularity, his most formidable foes ; he managed, however, to hold 
his own against them ; and when, after Eichard's death, he had to 
do with John Lackland, he had over him, even more than over his 
brother Richard, immense advantages. He made such vise of them 
that after six years' struggling, from 1199 to 1205, he deprived 
John of the greater part of his French possessions, Anjou, l&ox- 
mandy, Touraine, Maine, and Poitou. Philip would have been 
quite willing to dispense with any legal procedure by way of 
sanction to his conquests, but John furnished him with an excel- 
lent pretext; for on the 3rd of April, 1203, he assassinated with 
his own hand, in the tower of Rouen, his young nephew Arthur, 
duke of Brittany, and in that capacity vassal of Philip Augustus, 
to whom he was coming to do homage. The king of France thus 
recovered possession of nearly all the territories which his father, 
Louis YIL, had kept but for a moment. He added, in succession, 
other provinces to his dominions ; in such wise that the kingdom 
of France which Avas limited, as we have seen, under Louis the 
Fat, to the Ile-de-France and certain portions of Picardy and 
Orleanness, comprised besides, at the end of the reign of Philip 
Augustus, Vermandois, Artois, the two Yexins, French and Nor- 
man, Berri, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Au- 
vergne. 

In 1206 the territorial work of Philip Augustus was well ni^h 
completed ; but his wars were not over. John Lackland when 
worsted kicked against the pricks, and was incessantly hankering, 
in his antagonism to the King of France, after hostile alliances and 
local conspiracies, easy to hatch amongst certain feudal lords dis- 
contented with their suzerain. Being on intimate terms with his 
nephew, Otho IV., emperor of Germany and the foe of Philip 
Augustus, he urged him to prepare for a grand attack upon the 
King of France, and the two allies had won over to their coalition 
some of his most important vassals, amongst others, Renaud de 
Dampierre, count of Boulogne. The invasion of England, boldly 
attempted by Philip, proved a failure; on the 8th of April, 1213, 
he convoked, at Soissons, his principal vassals or allies, explained 
to them the grounds of his design against the Bang of England, 



Battle of Bouvines. I o i 

and, by a sort of special confederation, they bound themselves, all 
of them, to support him. One of the most considerable vassals, 
however, the sometime regent of France during the minority of 
Philip, Ferrand, count of Flanders, did not attend the meeting to 
which he had been summoned and declared his intention of taking 
no part in the war against England. " By all the saints of France," 
cried Philip, "either France shall become Flanders, or Flanders 
France ! " He entered Flanders accordingly, besieged and took 
several of the richest cities in the country, Cassel, Ypres, Bruges, 
and Courtrai, and pitched his camp before the walls of Ghent, " to 
lower," as he said, " the pride of the men of Ghent and make them 
bend their necks beneath the yoke of kings." The confederates 
had at their head the Emperor Otho IV., who had already won the 
Teputation of a brave and able soldier; and they numbered in their 
ranks several of the greatest lords, German, Flemish, and Dutch, 
and Hugh de Boves, the most dreaded of those adventurers in the 
pay of wealthy princes who were known at that time by the name 
of roadsters (routiers, mercenaries). They proposed, it was said, 
to dismember France; and a promise to that effect had been made 
by the Emperor Otho to his principal chieftains assembled in secret 
conference. " It is against Philip himself and him alone," he had 
said to them, " that we must direct all our efforts ; it is he who 
must be slain first of all, for it is he alone who opposes us and 
makes himself our foe in every thing. When he is dead, you wiU 
be able to subdue and divide the kingdom according to our pleasure; 
as for thee, Renaud, thou shalt take Peronne and all Vermandois ; 
Hugh shall be master of Beauvais, Salisbury of Dreux, Conrad of 
Mantes together with Vexin, and as for thee, Ferrand, thou shalt 
have Paris." 

The two armies marched over the Low Countries and Flanders, A.D. 1214 
seeking out both of them the most favourable position for com- Bouviues 
mencing the attack. On Sunday, the 27th of July, 1214, Philip 
had halted near the bridge of Bouvines, not far from Lille, and was 
resting under an ash beside a small chapel dedicated to St. Peter. 
There came running to him a messenger, sent by Guerin, bishop of 
Senlis, his coufidant in war as well as government, and brought 
him word that his rear guard, attacked by the Emperor Otho, was 
not sufficient to resist him. Philip went into the chapel, said a 
short prayer, and cried as he came out, " Haste we forward to the 
rescue of our comrades ! " Then he put on his armour, mounted 
his horse, and made swiftly for the point of attack, amidst the 
shouts of all those who were about him, " To arms ! to arms ! " 

Both armies numbered in their ranks not only all the feudal 



102 



History of France, 



important 
part played 
in it by the 
communes. 



Iteligions 
and intel- 
lectual 
state of 
France. 



chivalry on the two sides, but hurgher-forces, those from the 
majority of the great cities of Flanders being for Otho, and those 
from sixteen towns or communes of France for Philip Augustus. 
These communal forces evidently filled an important place in the 
king's army at Bouvines, and maintained it brilliantly. The battle 
was not the victory of Philip Augustus, alone, over a coalition of 
foreign princes; the victory was the work of king and people, barons, 
knights, burghers, and peasants of Ile-de-France, of Orleanness, of 
Picardy, of Kormandy, of Champagne, and of Burgundy. And 
this union of different classes and different populations in a senti- 
ment, a contest and a triumph shared in common was a decisive 
step in the organization and unity of France. The victory of Bou- 
vines marked the commencement of the time at which men might 
speak and indeed did speak, by one single name, of the, French.' 
The nation in France and the kingship in France on that day rose 
out of and above the feudal system. 

Philip Augustus was about the same time apprised of his son 
Loxiis' success on the banks of the Loire. The incapacity and 
swaggering insolence of King John had made all his Poitevine 
allies disgusted with him ; he had been obliged to abandon his 
attack upon the King of France in the provinces, and the insur- 
rection, growing daily more serious, of the English barons and 
clergy for the purpose of obtaining Magna Charta, was preparing 
for him other reverses. He had ceased to be a dangerous rival to 
Philip. 

The organization of the kingdom, the nation, and the kingship 
in France was not the only great event and the only great achieve- 
ment of that epoch. At the same time that this political movement 
was going on in the State, a religious and intellectual ferment was 
making head in the Church and in men's minds ; in the course of 
this active and salutary participation in the affairs of the world, 
the Christian clergy lost somewhat of their primitive and proper 
character ; religion in their hands was a means of power as well as 
of civilization ; and its principal members became rich and fre- 
quently substituted material weapons for the spiritual authority 
which had originally been their only reliance. Morals had sunk 
far below the laws, and religion was in deplorable contrast to 
morals. It was not laymen only who abandoned themselves with 
impunity to every excess of violence and licentiousness ; scandals 
were frequent amongst the clergy themselves ; bishoprics and other 
ecclesiastical benefices, publicly sold or left by will, passed down 
through families from father to son, and from husband to wife, and 
the possessions of the Church served for dowry to the daughters of 



State of the Church in France. 103 

bishops. Absolution was at a low quotation in the market, and 
redemption for sins of the greatest enormity cost scarcely the price 
of founding a church or a monastery. In the midst of such irre- 
gularities, the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the outbreak of a 
grand religious, moral and intellectual fermentation, and it was the 
Church herself that had the honour and the power of taking the Reforms in 
initiative in the reformation. Under the influence of Gregory VII. ^^^^ Church. 
the rigour of the popes began to declare itself against the scandals 
of the episcopate, the traffic in ecclesiastical benefices and the bad 
morals of the secular clergy. At the same time, austere men 
exerted themselves to rekindle the fervour of monastic life, re- 
established rigid rules in the cloister, and refilled the monasteries by 
their preaching and example. Rich and powerful laymen, filled 
with ardour for their faith or fear for their eternal welfare, went 
seeking after solitude, and devoted themselves to prayer in the 
monasteries they had founded or enriched with their wealth ; whole 
families were dispersed amongst various religious houses ; and aU 
the severities of penance hardly sufficed to quiet imaginations 
scared at the perils of living in the world or at the vices of their 
age. And, at the same time, in addition to this outburst of piety, Progress 

of l6S.l*Il<" 

ignorance was decried and stigmatized as the source of the prevail- -^^0. 
ing evils ; the function of teaching was included amongst the duties 
of the religious estate ; and every newly-founded or reformed 
monastery became a school in which pupils of all conditions were 
gratuitously instructed in the sciences known by the name of liberal 
arts. Bold spirits began to use the rights of individual thought in 
opposition to the authoiity of established doctrines; and others, 
without dreaming of opposing, strove at any rate to understand, 
which is the way to produce discussion. Activity and freedom of 
thought were receiving development at the same time that fervent 
faith and fervent piety were. The quarrel of Abelard with St. 
Bernard and the crusade against the Albigensians are the two most 
striking events in connection with this part of our subject ; they 
show us how ISTorthern France and Southern France differed one 
from the other before the bloody crisis which was to unite them iu 
one single name and one common destiny. 

It was in the very midst of the clergy themselves, amongst 
literates and teachers, that, in Northern France, the intellectual 
and innovating movement of the period was manifested and con- 
centrated. The movement was vigorous and earnest, and it was a a.D. 1079 
really studious host which thronged to the lessons of Abelard 't}}-^\ 
at Paris, on Mount St. Genevieve, at Melun, at Corbeil, and at the 
Paraclete j it was to expound and propagate what they regarded as 



I04 History of France, 

tbe philosophy of Christianity that masters and pupils made bold 
use of the freedom of thought ; they made but slight Avar upon the 
existing practical abuses of the Church ; they differed from her in 
the interpretation and comments contained in some of her dogmas; 
and they considered themselves in a position to explain and con- 
firm faith by reason. The chiefs of the Church, with St. Bernard 
at their head, were not slow to decry, in these interpretations and 
comments based upon science, danger to the simple and pure faith 
of the Chiistian ; they saw the apparition of dawning rationalism 
His doc- confronting orthodoxy. They had Abelard's doctrines condemned 
triues con- at the councils of Soissons and Sens; they prohibited him from 
public lecturing ; and they imposed upon him the seclusion of the 
cloister ; but they did not even harbour the notion of having him 
burnt as a heretic, and science and glory were respected in his 
person, even when his ideas were proscribed. Peter the Venerable, 
abbot of Cluni, one of the most highly considered and honoured 
prelates of the Church, received him amongst his own monks and 
treated him with paternal kindness, taking care of his health as 
well as of his eternal welfare ; and he who was the adversary of 
St. Bernard, and the teacher condemned by the councils of Soissons 
and Sens, died peacefully, on the 21st of April, 1142, in the abbey 
of St. Marcellus, near Chalon-sur-Saone, after having received the 
sacraments with much piety and in presence of all the brethren of 
the monastery. 

The struggle of Abelard with the Church of I^orthern France 
and the crusade against the Albigensians in Southern France are 
divided by much more than diversity and contrast ; there is an 
abyss between them. In Northern France, in spite of internal 
disorder and through the influence of its bishops, missionaries, and 
monastic reformers, the orthodox Church had obtained a decided 

Eeligions superiority and full dominion ; but in Southern France, on the 
condition ^ ^i , • it -l l t n i - , 

of Sonth- contrary, all the controversies, all the sects, and all the mystical or 

em France philosophical heresies which had disturbed Christendom from the 

second century to the ninth, had crept in and spread abroad. In 

it there were Arians, Manicheans, Gnostics, Paulicians, Cathars 

{fixe pure), and other sects of more local or more recent origin and 

name, Albigensians, Vaudians, Good People and Poor of Lyons, 

some piously possessed with the desire of returning to the pure 

faith and fraternal organization of the primitive evangelical Church, 

others given over to the extravagances of imagination or asceticism. 

The princes and the great laic lords of the country, the Counts of 

Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges, the Yiscount of Beziers, and 

many others had not remained unaffected by this condition of the 



Crusade against the Albigensians. 1 05 

people : the majority were accused of tolerating and even protect- 
ing the heretics ; and some were suspected of allowing their ideas 
to penetrate within their own households. 

After a not very effectual mission of St. Bernard, who died in 
1153, and for half a century, the orthodox Church was several The Albi- 
times occupied with the heretics of Southern France, who were gensians 
hefo]-e long called Albigensians, either because they were numerous 
in the diocese of Albi, or because the council of Lombers, one of 
the first at which their condemnation was expressly pronounced 
(in 1165), was held in that diocese. Innocent III. at first em 
ployed against them only spiritual and legitimate weapons. Before 
proscribing, he tried to convert them ; but the murder of Peter de 
Castelnau, his legate, by supposed agents of Eaymond VI., Count 
of Toulouse, brought matters to extremities. The crusade against A.D. 1208 
the Albigensians was the most striking application of two principles, JT j' 
equally false and fatal, which did more than as much evil to the against 
Catholics as to the heretics and to the papacy as to freedom ; and them. 
they are, the right of the spiritual power to claim for the coercion 
of souls the material force of the temporal powers, and its right to 
strip temporal sovereigns, in case they set at nought its injunctions, 
of their title to the obedience of their people ; in other words, 
denial of religious liberty to conscience and of political indepen- 
dence to States. It was by virtue of these two principles, at that 
time dominant, but not without some opposition, in Christendom, 
that Innocent III., in 1208, summoned the king of France, the 
great lords and the knights, and the clergy, secular and regular, of 
the kingdom to assume the cross and go forth to extirpate from 
Southern France the Albigensians "worse than the Saracens;" 
and that he promised to the chiefs of the crusaders the sovereignty 
of such domains as they should win by conquest from the princes 
who were heretics or protectors of heretics. 

Through all France and even outside of France the passions of 
religion and ambition were aroused at this summons. Twelve 
abbots and twenty monks of Citeaux dispersed themselves in all 
directions preaching the crusade ; and lords and knights, burghers 
and peasants, laymen and clergy, hastened to respond. Peter of 
Vaulx-Cernay, the chief contemporary chronicler of this crusade, 
says that, at the siege of Carcassonne, one of the first operations 
of the crusaders, "it was said that their army numbered fifty 
thousand men." Whatever may be the truth about the numbers, 
the crusaders were passionately ardent and persevering : the war 
against the Albigensians lasted twenty-one years (from 1208 to 
1229). and of the two leading spirits, one ordering and the other 



io6 



History of France. 



The war 
changes 
character. 
Simon de 
Montfort. 



A.D. 1218. 
He is killed 
at Tou- 
louse. 



executing, Pope Innocent III. and Simon de Montfort, neither sa-w 
the end of it. During these twenty-one years, in the region situated 
between the Elione, the Pyrenees, the Garonne, and even the 
Dordogne, nearly all the towns and strong castles were taken, lost, 
retaken, given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by 
the crusaders with all the cruelty of fanatics, and all the greed of 
conquerors. 

In the midst of these atrocious unbridlements of passions sup- 
posed to be religious, other passions were not slow to make their 
appearance. Innocent III. had promised the crusaders the enjoy- 
ment of the domains they might win by conquest from princes who 
were heretics or protectors of heretics. After the capture, in 1209, 
of Beziers and Carcassonne, the sovereignty of these possessions 
was granted by the Pope to Simon, lord of Montfort, earl of 
Leicester ; from this time forth the war in Southern Prance 
changed character, or, rather, it assumed a double character ; with 
the war of religion was openly joined a war of conquest ; it was 
no longer merely against the Albigensians and their heresies, it was 
against the native princes of Southern Prance and their domains 
that the crusade was prosecuted. Simon de Montfort was emi- 
nently qualified to direct, and accomplished this twofold design ; 
when, however, it became evident that the question lay far less 
between catholics and heretics than between the independence of 
the southern people and the triumph of warriors come from the north 
of Prance, that is to say, between two different races, civilizations, 
and languages, the count of Toulouse, Raymond VI. and his son 
recovered certain supports and opportunities of which hitherto the 
accusation of heresy and the judgments of the court of Pome had 
robbed them ; their neighbouring allies and their secret or intimi- 
dated partisans took fresh courage ; the fortune of battle became 
shifty ; successes and reverses were shared by both sides ; and not 
only many small places and castles but the largest towns, Toulouse 
amongst others, fell into the hands of each party alternately'. 
Innocent III.'s successor in the Holy See, Pope Honorius III., 
though at first very pronounced in his opposition to the Albi- 
gensians, had less ability, less perseverance, and less influence than 
his predecessor. Pinally, on the 25th of June, 1218, Simon de 
Montfort, who had been for nine months unsuccessfully besieging 
Toulouse, which had again come into the possession of Ray- 
mond YI., was killed by a shower of stones under the walls of the 
place, and left to his son Amaury the inheritance of his war and 
his conquests, but not of his vigorous genius and his warlike 
renown. The struggle stiU dragged on for five years with varied 



Philip Augustus as a Politician. 10/ 

fortune on each side, but Amaury de Montfort was losing ground 
every day, and Eaymond VI., when he died in August, 1222, had 
recovered the greater part of his dominions. His son, Eay- 
mond VII., continued the war for eighteen months longer, with 
enough of popular favour and of success to make his enemies despair 
of recovering their advantages ; and, on the 14th of January, 1224, 
Amaury de Montfort, after having concluded with the counts of 
Toulouse and Foix a treaty which seemed to have only a provi- 
sional character, ceded to Louis VIII., then king of France, his 
rights over the domains which the crusaders had conquered. 

Whilst this cruel war lasted Philip A ugustus would not take any 
part in it. E"ot that he had any leaning towards the Albigensian 
heretics on the score of creed or religious liberty ; but his sense of 
justice and moderation was shocked at the violence employed 
against them, and he had a repugnance to the idea of taking part 
in the devastation of the beautiful southern provinces. Never- 
theless, on the pope's repeated entreaty, he authorized his son to Discretion 
join in the war with such lords as might be willing to accompany of Philip 
him ; but he ordered that the expedition should not start before '^^^* '^** 
the spring, and, on the occurrence of some fresh incident, he had 
it further put off until the following year. He received visits from 
Count Eaymond VI., and openly testified good will towards him. 
When Simon de Montfort was decisively victorious, and in pos- 
session of the places wrested from Eaymond, Philip Augustus 
recognized accomplished facts, and received the new count of 
To\ilouse as his vassal ; but when, after the death of Simon de 
Montfort and Innocent III. the question was once more thrown 
open, and when Eaymond VI. first and then his son Eaymond VII. 
had recovered the greater part of their dominions, Philip formally 
refused to recognize Amaury de Montfort as successor to his father's 
conquests ; nay, he did more, he refused to accept the cession of 
those conquests, offered to him by Amaury de Montfort and pressed 
upon him by Pope Honorius III. Philip Augustus was not a scrupu- 
lous sovereign, nor disposed to compromise himself for the mere sake 
of defending justice and humanity ; but he was too judicious not to 
respect and protect, to a certain extent, the rights of his vassals as 
well as his own, and, at the same time, too discreet to involve 
himself, without necessity, in a barbarous and dubious war. He 
held aloof from the crusade against the Albigensians with as much 
wisdom and more than as much dignity as he displayed, seven- 
teen years before, in withdrawing from the crusade against the j<„_' 3- 
Saracens. tion of 

He had, in 121G, another great chance of showing his discretion. Jr'^*'^. 

' ' ° ° Loms mto 

England. 



io8 History of France. 

The EnglisTi barons were at war with, their king, John Lackland, 
in defence of Magna Charta, which they had obtained the year 
before ; and they offered the crown of England to the king of 
France, for his son, Prince Louis. Philip Augustus, who in his 
youth had dreamed of resuscitating the empire of Charlemagne, 
was strongly tempted to seize the opportunity of doing over again 
the work of William the Conqueror ; but he hesitated to endanger 
his power and his kingdom in such a war against King John and 
the pope. Foreseeing the dangers of events to come, he did not 
give his public consent, and, without any expression of wish or 
counsel, permitted the young prince to go, with the gift of his 
blessing. It was the ambitious princess Blanche of Castile, wife 
of Prince Louis, and destined to be the mother of St. Louis, who, 
after her husband's departure for England, made it her business to 
raise troops for him and to send him means of sustaining the war. 
Events justified the discreet reserve of Philip Augustus ; for John 
Lackland, after having suffered one reverse previously, died on the 
18th of October, 1216 ; his death broke up the party of the insur- 
gent barons ; and his son, Henry III., who was crowned on the 
28th of October in Gloucester cathedral, immediately confirmed 
the Great Charter. Thus the national grievance vanished, and 
national feeling resumed its sway in England ; the French every 
where became unpopular ; and after a few months' struggle, with 
equal want of skill and success. Prince Louis gave up his enter- 
prise and returned to France with his French comrades, on no 
other conditions but a mutual exchange of prisoners and an 
amnesty for the English who had been his adherents. 

At this juncture, as well as in the crusade against the Albigen- 
sians, Philip Augustus behaved towards the pope with a wisdom 
and ability hard of attainment at any time, and very rare in his 
own : he constantly humoured the papacy without being subser- 
vient to it, and he tes^tified towards it his respect and at the same 
A.D. 1196. time his independence. In his political life he always preserved 
this proper mean, and he found it succeed ; but in his domestic 
life there came a day when he suffered himself to be hurried out 
of his usual deference towards the pope ; and, after a violent at- 
tempt at resistance, he resigned himself to submission. The cir- 
cumstance we are alluding to is his repudiation of Ingeburga of 
Denmark, and his marriage with the Tyrolese princess Agnes of 
Merania, daughter of Bethold, Marquis of Istria, whom, about 
1180, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had made Duke of 
Moravia. The pope threatened Philip with the interdict ; that is, 
the suspension of all religious ceremonies, festivals, and forms in 



■ Ad?ninistration. 109 

the Churcli of France. The king resisted not only the threat, but 
also the sentence of the interdict, which was actually pronounced, 
first in the churches of the royal domain, and afterwards in those 
of the whole kingdom. For four years the struggle went on. At 
last Philip yielded to the injunction of the pope and the feeling of 
his people ; he sent away Agnes, and recalled Ingehurga. 

Pliilip Augustus was as energetic and effective in the internal Admini- 
administration of his kingdom as in foreign affairs ; thus, during his ^^e^^\° g. 
reign, we find a record of forty-one acts confirming certain com- dom. 
munes already established or certain privileges previously granted 
to certain populations, forty-three acts establishing new communes, 
or granting new local privileges, and nine acts decreeing suppres- 
sion of certain communes or a repressive intervention of the royal 
authority in their internal regulation, on account of quarrels or 
irregularities in their relations either with their lord, or, especially, 
with their bishop. These mere figures show the liberal character 
of the government of Philip Augustus in respect of this important 
work of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Nor are 
we less struck by his efficient energy in his care for the interests 
and material civilization of his people; "he ordered that all the 
thoroughfares and streets of Paris should be paved with hard and 
solid stone, for this right Christian prince aspired to rid Paris of 
her ancient name, Lutetia {Mud-town)." In 1190, on the eve of 
his departure for the crusade, " he ordered the burghers of Paris 
to surround with a good wall flanked by towers the city he loved 
so well, and to make gates thereto ; " and, in twenty years, this 
great work was finished on both sides of the Seine. " The king 
gave the same orders," adds the historian Rigord, " about the towns 
and castles of all his kingdom." His foresight went beyond such 
important achievements. " He had a good wall built to enclose the 
wood of Yincennes, heretofore open to any sort of folk. The 
King of England, on hearing thereof, gathered a great mass of 
fawns, hinds, does, and bucks, taken in his forests in ]Nrormandy 
and Aquitaine ; and having had them shipped aboard a large 
covered vessel, with suitable fodder, he sent them by way of the 
Seine to King Philip Augustus, his liege-lord at Paris. King 
Philip received the gift gladly, had his parks stocked with the 
animals and put keepers over them." A feeling, totally uncon- 
nected with the pleasures of the chase, caused him to order an 
enclosure very different from that of Vincennes. " The common 
cemetery of Paris, hard by the Church of the Holy Innocents, 
opposite the street of St. Denis, had remained up to that time open 
to all passers, man and beast, without any thing to prevent it from 



no History of France. 

being confounded with the most profane spot ; and the king, hurt 
at such indecency, had it enclosed by high stone-walls, with, as 
many gates as were judged necessaiy, which were closed every 
night." At the same time he had built, in this same quarter, the 
first great municipal market-places, enclosed, likewise, by a wall, 
with gates shut at night, and sui'mounted by a sort of covered 
gallery. Before his time, the ovens employed by the baking-trade 
in Paris were a monopoly for the profit of certain religious or laic 
establishments ; but when Philip Augustus ordered the walling-in 
of the new and much larger area of the city " he did not think it 
right to render its new inhabitants subject to these old liabilities, 
and he permitted all the bakers to have ovens wherein to bake 
their bread, either for themselves, or for all individuals who might 
wish to make use of them." His reign saw the completion, and, 
it might also be said, the construction of Notre-Dame de JParis, 
the frontage of which, in particular, was the work of this epoch. 
At the same time the king had the palace of the Louvre repaired 
and enlarged ; and he added to it that strong tower in which he 
kept in captivity for more than twelve years, Ferrand, count of 
Flanders, taken prisoner at the battle of Bouvines. We must also 
add to these proofs of manifold and indefatigable activity on the 
part of Philip Augustus the constant interest he testified in letters, 
science, study, the University of Paris, and its masters and pupils. 
It was to him that in 1200, after a violent riot, in which they con- 
sidered they had reason to complain of the provost of Paris, the 
students owed a decree, which, by regarding them as clerics, ex- 
empted them from the ordinary criminal jurisdiction so as to 
render them subject only to ecclesiastical authority. At that time 
there was no idea how to efficiently protect freedom save by grant- 
ing some privilege. 
Death of -^ death which seems premature for a man as sound and strong 
the king, in constitution as in judgment struck down Philip Augustus at the 
age of only fifty-eight, as he was on his way from Pacy-sur-Eure 
to Paris to be present at the council which was to meet there and 
once more take up the affair of the Albigensians. He had for 
several months been battling with an incessant fever ; he was 
obliged to halt at Mantes, and there he died on the 14th of January, 
1222, leaving the kingdom of Prance far more extensive and more 
compact, and the kingship in France far stronger and more re- 
A.T). 1223. spected than he had found them. His son, Louis VIII., inherited 
Lou s VIII. ^ great kingdom, an undisputed crown, and a power that was re- 
His cha- spected. It was matter of general remark, moreover, that, by his 
racter. mother, Isabel of Hainault, he was descended in the direct line 



Louis IX. and Blanche of Castile. Ill 

from Herraengarde, countess of Jifamur, daughter of Charles "A 
Lorraine, the last of the Carlovingians. Thus the claims of the 
two dynasties of Charlemagne and of Hugh Capet were united in 
his person ; and, although the authority of the Capetians was no 
longer disputed, contemporaries were glad to see in Louis VIII. this 
twofold heirship, which gave him the perfect stamp of a legitimate 
monarch. He was a man of downright mediocrity, without fore- 
sight, volatile in his resolves, and weak and fickle in the execution 
of them. He, as well as Philip Augustus, had to make war on the 
king of England and negotiate with the pope on the subject of the 
Albigensians ; but at one time he followed, without well under- 
standing it, his father's policy, at another he neglected it for some 
whim or under some temporary influence. He died on the 8th of a.D. 1226. 
November, 1226, after a reign of three years, adding to the history Louis IX. 
of Frame no glory save that of having been the son of Philip ^^ throne. 
Augustus, the husband of Blanche of Castile, and the father of 
St. Louis. 

We have already perused the most brilliant and celebrated 
amongst the events of St. Louis' reign, his two crusades against the 
Mussulmans ; and we have learned to know the man at the same 
time with the event, for it was in these warlike outbursts of his 
Christian faith that the king's character, nay, his whole soul, was 
displayed in all its originality and splendour. It was his good 
fortune, moreover, to have at that time as his comrade and bio- 
grapher, Sire de Joinville, one of the most sprightly and charming 
writers of the nascent French language. It is now of Louis in 
France and of his government at home that we have to take note. 
And in this part of his history he is not the only royal and really 
regnant personage we encounter; for of the forty-four years of 
St. Louis' reign, nearly fifteen, with a long interval of separation, A.D. 1226 
pertained to the government of Queen Blanche of Castile rather ^^^^^^ 
than that of the king her son. Louis, at his accession, in 1226, ment of 
was only eleven ; and he remained a minor up to the age of twenty- ^^*°j^^ °' 
one, in 1236, for the time of majority in the case of royalty was 
not yet specially and rigorously fixed. During those ten years 
Queen Blanche governed France ; not at all, as is commonly as- 
serted, with the official title of regent, but simply as guardian of the 
king her son. "With a good sense reaUy admirable in a person so 
proud and ambitious, she saw that official power was iU suited to her 
woman's condition and would weaken rather than strengthen her ; 
and she screened herself from view behind her son. He it was who, 
in 1226, wrote to the great vassals bidding them to his consecra- 
tion; he it vias who reigned and commanded; and his name alone 



112 History of France, 

appeared on royal decrees and on treaties. It was not until twetity- 
two years had passed, in 1248, that Louis, on starting for the 
crusade, officially delegated to his mother the kingly authority, 
and that Blanche, during her son's aosence, really governed with 
the title of regent, up to the 1st of December, 1252, the day of 
his death. 
Her qua During the first period of his government, and so long as her 

lities. gon's minority lasted. Queen Blanche had to grapple with intrigues, 

plots, insurrections, and open war, and, what was still worse for 
her, with the insults and calumnies of the crown's great vassals, 
burning to seize once more, under a woman's government, the 
independence and power which had been effectually disputed with 
them by Philip Augustus. Blanche resisted their attempts, at one 
time with open and persevering energy, at another dexterously 
with all the tact, address and allurements of a woman. !N"either 
in the events nor in the writings of the period is it easy to find any 
thing which can authorize the accusations made by the foes of 
Queen Blaiiche, to the effect that she encouraged the passion of 
Theobald IV., count of Champagne ; but it is certain that neither 
the poetry nor the advances of the nobleman made any difference 
in the resolutions and behaviour of the queen. She continued 
her resistance to the pretensions and machinations of the great 
vassals, whether foes or lovers, and she carried forward, in the face 
and in the teeth of all, the extension of the domains and the power 
Her politi- of the kingship. She saw by profound instinct what forces and 
sighr^' alliances might be made serviceable to the kingly power against 
its rivals. When, on the 29th of iSTovember, 1226, only three 
weeks after the death of her husband Louis VIII., she had her son 
crowned at Eheims, she bade to the ceremony not only the prelates 
and grandees of the kingdom, but also the inhabitants of the 
neighbouring communes; wishing to let the great lords see the 
people surrounding the royal child. In 1228, amidst the insur- 
rection of the barons, who were assembled at Corbeil, and who 
meditated seizing the person of the young king during his halt at 
Montlhery on his march to Paris, Queen Blanche had summoned 
to her side, together with the faithful chivalry of the country, the 
burghers of Paris and of the neighbourhood ; and they obeyed the 
appeal with alacrity. Eight years later, in 1236, Louis IX. 
attained his majority, and Blanche transferred to him a power 
respected, feared and encompassed by vassals always turbulent and 
still often aggressive, but disunited, weakened, intimidated, or 
A.D. 1234. discredited, and always outwitted, for a space of ten years, in 

Marriaga ^)^^^ ^AQi^. In 1234, amidst great rejoicings, he married by his 

of the ^ 

king. 



Relations of Saint Louis with the Nobles. 113 

mother's advice the princess Marguerite, elder daughter of Eaymond 

Beranger, count of Provence. 

The entrance of Louis IX. upon personal exercise of the kingly Maintains 

power produced no change in the conduct of public affairs. '^^ "ff'i*^ 

There was no vain seeking after innovation on purpose to mark crown 

the accession of a new master, and no reaction in the deeds and a?*i'ist 

words of the sovereign or in the choice and treatment of his vassals, 

advisers ; the kingship of the son was a continuance of the mother's 

government. Louis persisted in struggling for the preponderance 

of the crown against the great vassals ; succeeded in taming Peter 

Mauclerc, the turbulent count of Brittany ; wrung from Theobald 

IV., count of Champagne, the rights of suzerainty in the 

countships of Chartres, Blois, and Sancerre, and the viacountship 

of Chateaudun ; and purchased the fertile countship of Macon 

from its possessor. It was almost always by pacific procedure, by 

negotiations ably conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, 

that he accomplished these increments of the kingly domain; and 

when he made war on any of the great vassals, he engaged therein Rebellion 

only on their provocation, to maintain the rights or honour of his "^ t^e 

crown, and he used victory with as much moderation as he had LaMarche 

shown before entering upon the struggle. Thus Hugh de Lusignan, 

count of la Marche, had not only declined doing homage to the 

king's brother, Alphonso, count of Poitiers, whose vassal he was, 

but had also excited to rebellion certain powerful lords, of la Marche, 

Saintonge, and Angoumois, and had called to his assistance Henry 

III , king of England, son of the countess of la Marche. Louis 

summoned the crown's vassals to a parliament ; and " What think A Par- 

vou," he asked them, " should be done to a vassal who would fain ^i^™*^* , 

saiDnxoned. 
hold land without owning a lord, and who goeth against the fealty 

and homage due from him and his predecessors % " The answer was 

that the lord ought in that case to take back the fief as his own 

property. " As ray name is Louis," said the king, " the count of 

la Marche doth claim to hold land in such wise, land which hath 

been a fief of France since the days of the valiant King Clovis, who 

won all Aquitaine from King Alaric, a pagan without faith or 

creed, and all the country to the Pyrenean mount." And the 

barons promised the king their energetic co-operation. 

The war was pushed on zealously by both sides. In this young 

king of France, this docile son of an able mother, none knew what 

a hero there was, until he revealed himself on a sudden. Near two A.D. 1243. 

towns of Saintonge, Taillebourg and Saintes, at a bridge which Battle of 

covered the approaches of one and in front of the walls of the boorg. 

other, Louis, on the 21st and 22ad of July, delivered two battles 

I 



114 History of France. 

in which the brilliancy of his personal valour and the affectionate 
enthusiasm he excited in his troops secured victory and the sur- 
render of the two places. The successes he had gained in his 
campaign of 1242 were not for him the first step in an endless 
career of glory and conquest ; he was anxious only to consolidate 
them, whilst securing, in Western Europe, for the dominions of his 
adversaries as well as for his own the benefits of peace. He 
entered into negotiations, successively, with the count of la Marche, 
the king of England, the count of Toulouse, the king of Aragon, 
and the various princes and great feudal lords who had been more 
A.D. 1243. Qj. jggg engaged in the Avar; and in January, 1243, the treaty of 
Lorris. Lorris marked the end of feudal troubles for the whole duration of 
St. Louis' reign. He drew his SAVord no more, save only against 
the enemies of the Christian faith and Christian civilization, the 
Mussulmans. 

^Nevertheless there was no lack of opportunities for interfering 
with a powerful arm amongst the sovereigns his neighbours, and 
for working their disagreements to the profit of his ambition, had 
ambition guided his conduct ; but into his relations with foreign 
sovereigns, his neighbours, he imported the most loyal spirit. 
Belations " Certain of his council used to tell him," reports Joinville, " that 
oiLouisIX. jjjj (jj(j jjQ^ ^g]2 jn jiQt leaving these foreigners to their warfare ; 
foreign for, if he gave them his good leave to impoverish one another, they 
sovereigns, would not attack him so readily as if they were rich. To that the 
king replied that they said not well ; for, quoth he, if the neigh- 
bouring princes perceived that I left them to their warfare, they 
might take counsel amongst themselves, and say, 'It is through 
malice that the king leaves us to our warfare ;' then it might 
happen that by cause of the hatred they would have against me, 
they would come and attack me, and I might be a great loser 
thereby. Without reckoning that I should thereby earn the 
hatred of God, who says, 'Blessed be the peacemakers !'" 

So well established was his renown as a sincere friend of peace 

and a just arbiter in great disputes between princes and peoples, 

that his intervention and his decisions were invited wherever 

obscure and dangerous questions arose. Louis gave not only to 

the king of England, but to the whole English nation, a striking 

A.D. 1264. proof of his judicious and true-hearted equity. An obstinate civil 

Is chosen -war was raging between Henry III. and his barons. Neither 

between Y^'^'^li ^^ defending its OAvn rights, had any notion of respecting 

Henry III. the rights of its adversaries, and England was alternating between 

ind'^his" a kingly and an aristocratic tyranny. Louis, chosen as arbiter by 

oarons. both sides, delivered solemnly, oi the 23rd of January, 1264, a 



Arbitrates bettveen Henry III. and the English Barons. 115 

■decision wliicli was favourable to the Englisli kingship, but at the 
same time expressly upheld the Great Charter and the traditional 
liberties of England. He concluded his decision with the following 
suggestions of amnesty : " We will also that the king of England 
and his barons do forgive one another mutually, that they do forget 
all the resentments that may exist between them by consequence 
of the matters submitted to our arbitration, and that henceforth 
they do refrain reciprocally from any offence and injury on account 
of the same matters." But when men have had their ideas, passions, 
and interests profoundly agitated and made to clash, the wisest 
decisions and the most honest counsels in the world are not 
sufficient to re-establish peace ; the cup of experience has to be Fairness of 
drunk to the dregs ; and the parties are not resigned to peace until ^i^ ^eci- 
one or the other, or both have exhausted themselves in the struggle, 
and perceive the absolute necessity of accepting either defeat or 
compromise. In spite of the arbitration of the king of France, the 
civil war continued in England ; but Louis did not seek in any 
way to profit by it so as to extend, at the expense of his neighbours, 
his own possessions or power ; he held himself aloof from their 
quarrels, and followed up by honest neutrality his ineffectual 
arbitration. Eive centuries afterwards the great English historian, 
Hume, rendered him due homage in these terms : " Every time 
this virtuous prince interfered in the affairs of England, it was " 
invariably with the view of settling differences between the king 
and the nobility. Adopting an admirable course of conduct, as 
politic probably as it certainly was just, he never interposed his 
good offices save to put an end to the disagreements of the English ; 
he seconded all the measures which could give security to both 
parties, and he made persistent efforts, though without success, to 
moderate the fiery ambition of the earl of Leicester." (Hume, 
History of England, t. ii. p. 465.) 

To watch over the position and interests of all parties in his His ad- 
dominions and to secure to all his subjects strict and prompt justice, ^^"istra- 
this was what continually occupied the mind of Louis IX. On justice, 
this subject we may transcribe Joinville's often-quoted account of 
St. Louis's familiar intervention in his subjects' disputes about 
matters of private interest. "Many a time," says he, "it hap- 
pened in summer that the king went and sat down in the wood 
of Vincennes after Mass, and leaned against an oak and made us sit 
down round about him. And all those who had business came to 
speak to him without restraint of usher or other folk. And then he 
demanded of them with his own mouth, ' Is there here any who 
hath a suit 1 ' and they who had their suit rose up ; and then he 

I 2 



Ii6 History of France. 

said, ' Keep silence all of ye ; and ye shall have despatch one after 
the other.' And then he called my lord Peter de Fontaines and 
my lord Geoffrey de Villette (two learned lawyers of the day and 
counsellors of St. Louis), and said to one of them, * Despatch me 
this suit.' And when he saw ought to amend in the words of 
those who were speaking for another, he himself amended it with 
his own mouth. I sometimes saw in summer that, to despatch his 
people's business, he went into the Paris garden, clad in camlet 
coat and linsey surcoat without sleeves, a mantle of black taffety 
round his neck, hair right well combed and withoTit coif, and on 
his head a hat with white peacock's plumes. And he had carpets 
laid for us to sit round about him. And all the people who had 
business before him set themselves standing around him ; and then 
he had their business despatched in the manner I told you of 
before as to the wood of Vincennes." (Joinville, chap, xii.) 

The active benevolence of St. Louis was not confined to this 
paternal care for the private interests of such subjects as approached 
his person ; he was equally attentive and zealous in the case of 
measures called for by the social condition of the times and the 
general interests of the kingdom. Amongst the twenty-six 
government ordinances, edicts, or letters, contained under the date 
of his reign in the first volume of the Recueil des Ordonnances des 
and ordi- Mois de France, seven, at the least, are great acts of legislation and 
nances. administration of a public kind ; and these acts are all of such a 
stamp as to show that their main object is not to extend the power 
of the crown or subserve the special interests of the kingship at 
strife with other social forces ; they are real reforms, of public and 
moral interest, directed against the violence, disturbances, and 
abuses of the feudal system. As for the large collection of legis- 
"Etablis- ^^^^ enactments known by the name of Btahlissements de Saint 
sements de Louis, it is probably a lawyer's work, posterior, in great part at 
LoiT's " least, to his reign, full of incoherent and even contradictory enact- 
ments, and without any claim to be considered as a general code of 
law of St. Louis' date and collected by his order, although the 
paragraph which serves as preface to the work is given under his 
name and as if it had been dictated by him. 
"Prag. Another act, known by the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, has 

Sanction" likewise got placed, with the date of March, 1268, in the Recueil 
"The Gal- des Ordonnances des Rois de France, as having originated -with St. 
ch^^ . , Louis. Its object is, first of all, to secure the rights, liberties, and 
canonical rules, internally, of the Church of France ; and, next, to 
interdict " the exactions and very heavy money-charges which have 
been imposed or may hereafter be imposed on the said Church by 



His l&ws 



Police Regulations. II7 

the court of Rome, and by the which our kingdom hath been 
miserably impoverished ; unless they take place for reasonable, 
pious, and very urgent cause, through inevitable necessity, and with 
our spontaneous and express consent, and that of the Church of our 
kingdom." The authenticity of this act, vigorously maintained in 
the seventeenth century by Bossuet (in his Defense de la Decla- 
ration da Clerge de France de 1682, chap. ix. t. xliii. p. 26), and 
in our time by M. Daunou (in the Histoire litteraire de la France, 
continuee par des Membres de Vlnstituf, t. xvi. p. 75, and t. xix. 
p. 169), has been and still is rendered doubtful for strong reasons, 
which M. Felix Faure, in his Histoire de Saint Louis (t. ii. p. 271), 
has summed up with great clearness. There is no design of 
entering here upon an examination of this little historical problem ; 
but it is a bounden duty to point out that, if the autheiiticity of 
the Pragraatie Sanction, as St. Louis', is questionable, the act has, 
at bottom, nothing but what bears a very strong resemblance to 
and is quite in conformity with the general conduct of that prince. 
He was profoundly respectful, affectionate, and faithful towards the 
papacy, but, at the same time, very careful in upholding both the 
independence of the crown in things temporal and its right of 
superintendence in things spiritual 

One special fact in the civil and municipal administration of Police in 
St. Louis deserves to find a place in history. After the time of gfg"^gj^ 
Philip Augustus there was malfeasance in the police of Paris. The Boilean. 
provostship of Paris, which comprehended functions analogous to 
those of prefect, mayor, and receiver-general, became a purchaseable 
office, filled sometimes by two provosts at a time. The burghers 
no longer found justice or security in the city where the king re- 
sided. At his return from his first crusade, Louis recognized 
the necessity for applying a remedy to this evil ; the provostship 
ceased to be a purchaseable office ; and he ipade it separate from the 
receivership of the royal domain. In 1258, he chose as provost 
Stephen Boileau, a burgher of note and esteem in Paris; and in 
order to give this magistrate the authority of which he had need, 
the king sometimes came and sat beside him, when he was admi- 
nistering justice at the Chatelet. Stephen Boileau justified tho 
king's confidence, and maintained so strict a police that he had his 
own godson hanged for theft. His ax^lministrative foresight was 
equal to his judicial severity. He established registers wherein 
were to be inscribed the rules habitually followed in respect of the 
organization and work of the different corporations of artisans, the 
tariffs of the dues charged, in the name of the king, upon the ad- 
mittance of provisions and merchandise, and the titles on which the 



Il8 History of France. 

abbots and other lords founded the privileges they enjoyed •within 
the walls of Paris. The corporations of artisans, represented by 
their sworn masters or 2)rw(i7iommes, appeared one after the other 
before the provost to make declaration of the usages in practice 
amongst their communities, and to have them registered in the book 
prepared for that purpose. This collection of regulations relating 
to the arts and trades of Paris in the thirteenth century, known under 
the name of Livre des Metiers d'^tienne Boileau, is the earliest monu- 
ment of industrial statistics drawn up by the French administration. 
All the chroniclers of the age, all the historians of his reign 
have celebrated the domestic virtues of Saint Louis, his charity as 
much as his piety ; and the philosophers of the eighteenth century 
almost forgave him his taste for relics in consideration of his 
beneficence. And it was not merely legislative and administrative 
benefi.cence ; St. Louis did not confine himself to founding and 
endowing hospitals, hospices, asylums, the Hotel-Dieu at Pontoise, 
that at Vernon, that at Compiegne, and, at Paris, the house of 
Quinze-Yingts, for 300 blind ; but he did not spare his person 
in his beneficence, and regarded no deed of charity as beneath 
Charity a king's dignity. "Every day, wherever the king went, one 
^r th^^*^ hundred and twenty-two of the poor received each two loaves, a 
king. quart of wine, meat or fish for a good dinner, and a Paris denier. 

The mothers of families had a loaf more for each child. Besides 
these hundred and twenty- t'wo poor baving out-door relief, thirteen 
others were every day introduced into the h6tel and there lived as 
the king's ofiicers ; and three of them sat at table at the same time 
with the king, in the same hall as he, and quite close." . . . . " Many 
a time," says Joinville, " I saw him cut their bread and give them 
to drink. He asked me one day if I washed the feet of the poor on 
Holy Thursday : ' Sir,' said I, ' what a benefit ! The feet of those 
knaves ! Not I.' ' Verily,' said he, ' that is ill said, for you ought 
not to hold in disdain what God did for our instruction. I pray 
you, therefore, for love of me, accustom yourself to wash them.' " 

He who thus felt and acted was no monk, no prince enwrapt in 
mere devoutness and altogether given up to works and practices 
of piety ; he was a knight, a warrior, a politician, a true king, who 
. attended to the duties of authority as well as to those of charity, 
and who won respect from his nearest friends as well as from 
strangers, whilst astonishing them at one time by his bursts of 
mystic piety and monastic austerity, at another by his flashes of 
the ruler's spirit and his judicious independence, even towards the . 
representatives of the faith and Church with whom he was in 
sympathy. "He passed for the wisest man in all his council." He 



Samt Louis encourages literature. 119 

delighted iu books and literates ; " He was sometimes present at His fond- 
the discourses and disputations of tlie University ; but he took ^^^a 
care to search out for himself the truth in the word of God and in 

the traditions of the Church Having found out, during his 

travels in the East, that a Saracenic sultan had collected a quantity 
of books for the service of the philosophers of his sect, he was 
shamed to see that Christians had less zeal for getting instructed in 
the truth than infidels had for getting themselves made dexterous 
in falsehood ; so much so that, after his return to France, he had 
search made in the abbeys for all the genuine works of St. Augustin, 
St. Ambrose, St, Jerome, St. Gregory, and other orthodox teachers, 
and, having caused copies of them to be made, he had them placed 
in the treasury of Sainte-Chapelle. He used to read them when 
he had any leisure^ and he readily lent them to those who might 
get profit from them for themselves or for others. Sometimes, at 
the end of the afternoon meal, he sent for pious persons with whom 
he conversed about God, about the stories in the Bible and the 
histories of the saints, or about the lives of the Fathers." He had 
a particular friendship for the learned Robert of Sorbon, founder 
of the Sorbonne, whose idea was a society of secular ecclesiastics, 
who, living in common and having the necessaries of life, should 
give themselves up entirely to study and gratuitous teaching. Not 
only did St. Louis give him every facility and every aid necessary 
-for the establishment of his learned college ; but he made him one 
of his chaplains, and often invited him to his presence and his 
table in order to enjoy his conversation. 

For all his moral sympathy, and superior as he was to his age, His Wun- 
St. Louis, nevertheless, shared and even helped to prolong two of ^^- 
its greatest mistakes ; as a Christian he misconceived the rights of ception of 
conscience in respect of religion, and, as a king, he brought upon the rights 
his people deplorable evils and perils for the sake of a fruitless science, 
enterprise. "War against religious liberty was, for a long course of 
ages, the crime of Christian communities and the source of the mopt 
cruel evils as well as of the most formidable irreligious reactions 
the world has had to undergo. The thirteenth century was tho 
culminating period of this fatal notion and the sanction of it con- 
ferred by civil legislation as well as ecclesiastical teaching. St. 
Louis joined, so far, with sincere conviction, in the general and 
ruling idea of his age ; and the jumbled code which bears the name 
of ^tahlissements de Saint Louis, formally condemns heretics to 
death, and bids the civil judges to see to the execution, in this 
respect, of the bishops' sentences. In 1255 St. Louis himself 
demanded of Pope Alexander .IV. leave for the Dominicans and 



120 History of France. 

Franciscans to exercise, throughout the whole kingdom, the inquisi- 
tion already established, on account of the Albigensians, in the old 
domains of the counts of Toulouse. His extreme severity towards 
what he called the knaviah oath [vUain sermeni), that is, blasphemy, 
an offence for which there is no definition save what is contained 
in the bare name of it, is, perhaps, the most striking indication of 
the state of men's minds, and especially of the king's, in this re- 
spect. Every blasphemer was to receive on his mouth the imprint 
of a red-hot iron. In the matter of religious liberty St. Louis is 
a striking example of the Vagaries which may be fallen into, under 
the sway of public feeling, by the most equitable of minds and 
the most scrupulous of consciences. A solemn warning, in times 
of great intellectual and popular ferment, for those men whose 
hearts are set on independence in their thoughts as well as in their 
conduct, and whose only object is justice and truth. As for the 
crusades, the situation of Louis was with respect to them quite 
different and his responsibility far more personal. It was a great 
error in his judgment that he prolonged, by his blindly prejudiced 
obstinacy, a movement which was more and more inopportune and 
illegitimate, for it was becoming day by day more factitious and 
more inane. 
A.D. 1270. St. Louis was succeeded by his son, Philip III., a prince, no 
Philip III. doubt, of some personal valour, since he has retained in history the 
king of nickname of The Bold, but not, otherwise, beyond mediocrity. His 
France, reign had an unfortunate beginning. After having passed several 
months before Tunis, in slack and unsuccessful continuation of his 
father's crusade, he gave it up and re -embarked in N^ovember, 1270, 
with the remnants of an army anxious to quit " that accursed land," 
wrote one of the crusaders, "where we languish rather than live, 
exposed to torments of dust, fury of winds, corruption of atmos- 
phere and putrefaction of corpses." He arrived at Paris, on the 
21st of May, 1271, bringing back with him five royal biers, that 
of his father, that of his brother John Tristan, count of Nevers, 
that of his brother-in-law Theobald king of Navarre, that of his 
wife and that of his son. The day after his arrival he conducted 
them all in state to the Abbey of St. Denis, and was crowned, at 
Eheims, not until the 30th of August following. His reign, which, 
lasted fifteen years, was a period of neither repose nor glory. He 
engaged in war several times over in Southern France and in the 
north of Spain, in 1272, against Roger Bernard, count of Foix, and 
in 1275 against Don Pedro III., king of Aragon, attempting con- 
quests and gaining victories, but becoming easily disgusted with 
his enterprises and gaining no result of importance or durability. 



Philip III. and Peter de la Brosse. I2X 

Without his taking himself any official or active part in the matter, 
the name and credit of France were more than once compromised 
in the affairs of Italy through the continual Avars and intrigues of 
his uncle Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily, who was just as amhi- 
tious, just as turbulent and just as tyrannical as his brother St. 
Louis was scrupulous, temperate and just. It was in the reign of 
Philip the Bold that there took place in Sicily, on the 30th of 
March, 1282, that notorious massacre of the French which is known 
by the name of Sicilian Vespers, which was provoked by the nn- a.D. 1282. 
bridled excesses of Charles of Anjou's comrades, and through which ''Sicilian 
many noble French families had to suffer cruelly. At the same time, 
the celebrated Italian admiral Eoger de Loria inflicted, by sea, on the 
French party in Italy, the Proven9al navy, and the army of Philip 
the Bold, who was engaged upon, incursions into Spain, considerable 
reverses and losses. At the same period the foundations were being 
laid in Germany and in the north of Italy, in the person of Eudolph 
of Hapsburg, elected emperor, of the greatness reached by the 
House of Austria, which was destined to be so formidable a rival to 
France. The government of Philip III. showed hardly more ability 
at home than in Europe; not that the king was himself violent, of Philip's 
tyrannical, greedy of power or money, and unpopular ; but he govern- 
was weak, credulous, very illiterate, and without penetration, fore- 
sight, or intelligent and determined will. He fell under the 
influence of an inferior servant of his house, Peter de la Brosse, Peter de la 
who had been surgeon and barber first of all to St. Louis and *^**ss®* 
then to Philip III., who made him, before long, his chancellor 
and familiar counsellor. This barber-mushrcom was soon a mark 
for the jealousy and the attacks of the great lords of the court ; he 
joined issue with them, and even with the young queen, Maria of 
Brabant, the second wife of Philip III. Accusations of treason, of 
poisoning and peculation were raised against him, and, in 1278, he 
was hanged at Paris, on the thieves' gibbet, in presence of the 
dukes of Burgundy and Brabant, the count of Artois, and many 
other personages of note, who took pleasure in witnessing his 
execution, Peter de la Brosse was one of the first examples, in 
French history, of those favourites who did not understand that, 
if the scandal caused by their elevation were not to entail their 
ruin, it was incumbent upon them to be great men. 

In spite of the want of ability and the weakness conspicuous in 
the government of PhUip the Bold, the kingship in France had, in 
his reign, better fortunes than could have been expected. The 
death, without children, of his uncle Alphonso, St. Louis's brother, 
count of Poitiers and also count of Toulouse, through his wife^ 



122 History of France. 

Joan, daughter of Raymond VIL, put Philip in possession of those 
fair provinces. He at first possessed the countship of Toulouse 
merely with the title of count, and as a private domain which was 
not definitely incorporated with the crown of France until a century 
later. Certain disputes arose between England and France in 
respect of this great inheritance ; and Philip ended them by ceding 
Agenois to Edward I., king of England, and keeping Quercy. 
He also ceded to Pope Urban lY., the county of Yenaissin, with 
its capital Avignon, which the court of Eome claimed by virtue of 
a gift from Raymond YII., count of Toulouse, and which, through. 
a course of many disputations and vicissitudes, remained in posses- 
sion of the Holy See until it was reunited to France on the 19th 
of February, 1797, by the treaty of Tolentino. But, notwith- 
standing these concessions, when Philip the Bold died, at Per- 
pignan, the 5th of October, 1285, on his return from his expedition 
in Aragon, the sovereignty in Southern France, as far as the 
frontiers of Spain, had been won for the kingship of France. 

A Flemish chronicler, a monk at Egmont, describes the character 
of Philip the Bold's successor in the following words : " A certain 
king of France, also named Philip, eaten up by the fever of avarice 
and cupidity." And that was not the only fever inherent in 
Philip lY., called the Handsome ; he was a prey also to that of 
A.D. 1285. ambition, and above all, to that of power. When he mounted the 
<^th.Vhand *^^o^^^> ^^ seventeen years of age, he was handsome, as his nick- 
some). — name tells us, cold, taciturn, harsh, brave at need, but without fire 

His cha- ^p dash, able in the formation of his designs and obstinate in 
racter, . . ° . 

prosecuting them by craft or violence, by means of bribery or 

cruelty, with wit to choose and support his servants, passionately 
vindictive against his enemies, and faithless and unsympathetic 
towards his subjects, but from time to time taking care to conciliate 
them either by calling them to his aid in his difficulties or his 
clangers, or by giving them protection against other oppressors. 
Never, perhaps, was king better served by circumstances or more 
successful in his enterprises ; but he is the first of the Capetians 
who had a scandalous contempt for rights, abused success, and 
thrust the kingship, in France, upon the high-road of that arrogant 
and reckless egotism which is sometimes compatible with ability 
and glory, but which carries with it in the germ, and sooner or 
later brings out in full bloom, the native vices and fatal con- 
sequences of arbitrary and absolute power. 
Eelations Away from his own kingdom, in his oAvn dealings with foreign 
with Eng- countries, Philip the Handsome had a good fortune, which his 
predecessors had lacked, and which his successors lacked still more. 



Philip IV. — Wars with Flanders. 123 

Through William the Conqueror's settlement in England and 
Henry II, 's marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the kings of 
England had, by reason of their possessions and their claims in 
France, become the natural enemies of the kings of France, and 
war was almost incessant between the two kingdoms. But Edward 
I., king of England, ever since his accession to the throne, in 1272, 
had his ideas fixed upon, and his constant efforts directed towards 
the conquests of the countries of Wales and Scotland, so as to unite 
under his sway the whole Island of Great Britain. In spite, then, 
of frequent interruptions, the reign of Edward I. was on the whole 
a period of peace between England and France, being exempt, at 
any rate, from premeditated and obstinate hostilities. 

In Southern France, at the foot of the Pyrenees, Philip the And with 
Handsome, just as his father Philip the Bold, was, during the first Aragon. 
year of his reign, at war with the kings of Aragon, Alphonso III. 
and Jayme II. ; but these campaigns, originating in purely local 
quarrels or in the ties between the descendants of St. Louis and of 
his brother Charles of Anjou, king of the Two Sicilies, rather than 
in furtherance of the general interests of France, were terminated in 
1291 by a treaty concluded at Tarascon between the belligerents, 
and have remained without historical importance. 

The Flemish were the people with whom Philip the Handsome His 
engaged in and kept up, during the whole of his reign, with quarrels 
frequent alternations of defeat and success, a really serious war, Flemings. 
In the thirteenth century Flanders was the most populous and the 
richest country in Europe She owed the fact to the briskness of 
her manufacturing and commercial undertakings not only amongst 
her neighbours, but throughout Southern and Eastern Europe, in 
Italy, in Spain, in Sweden, in J^orway, in Hungary, in Russia, and 
even as far as Constantinople, where, as we have seen, Baldwin I., 
count of Flanders, became, in 1204, Latin Emperor of the East, 
Cloth and all manner of woollen stuffs were the principal articles 
of Flemish production, and it was chiefly from England that 
Flanders drew her supply of wool, the raw material of her industry. 
Thence arose between the two countries commercial relations, which 
could not fail to acquire political importance. At the time of 
Philip the Handsome's accession to the throne, Guy de Dampierre, Guy de 
of noble Champagnese origin, had been for five years count of Dampierre 
Flanders, as heir to his mother Marguerite 11. He was a prince Fiandera, 
who did not lack courage, or, on a great emergency, high-minded- 
ness and honour ; but he was ambitious, covetous, as parsimonious 
as his mother had been munificent, and above all concerned to get 
his children married in a manner conducive to his own political 



124 History of France. 

importance. In 1293 he was secretly negotiating the marriage of 

Philippa, one of his daughters, with Prince Edward, eldest son of 

the king of England. PhUip the Handsome, having received due 

warning, invited tlie count of Flanders to Paris, " to take counsel 

with him and the other harons touching the state of the kingdom." 

At first Guy hesitated ; but he dared not refuse, and he repaired to 

Is arrested Y^x\s, with his sons John and Guy. The three princes were 
in Paris. "^ 

marched off at once to the tower of the Louvre, where Guy 

remained for six months, and did not then get out save by leaving 

as hostage to the king of France his daughter Philippa herself, who 

was destined to pass in this prison her young and mournful life. 

On once more entering Flanders, and driven to extremity by the 

haughty severity of PhUip, Count Guy at last came to a decision, 

concluded a formal treaty with Edward I., af&anced to the English 

crown-prince the most youthful of his daughters, Isabel of Flanders, 

and formally renounced his allegiance to Philip the Handsome. 

A.D. 1297. This meant war. And it was prompt and sharp on the part of 

r°andis°^ the king of France, slow and dull on the part of the king of 

England, who was always more bent upon the conquest of Scotland 

than upon defending, on the Continent, his ally the count of 

Flanders. The French arms were at first crowned with success ; 

but the greed and cruelty of the conquerors soon led to an outburst 

of violent sedition. A simple weaver, obscure, poor, undersized 

and one-eyed, but valiant and eloquent in his Flemish tongue, one 

A.D. 1301. Peter Deconing, became the leader of revolt in Bruges ; accomplices 

Revolt at flQgjj-gfj ^o him from nearly all the towns of Flanders ; and he found 
£ruges. 

allies amongst their neighbours. In 1302 war again broke out; 

but it was no longer a war between Philip the Handsome and Guy 
de Dampierre : it was a war between the Flemish communes and 
their foreign oppressors. Every where resounded the cry of 
insurrection : " Our bucklers and our friends for the lion of 
Flanders! Death to all Walloons !" Philip the Handsome pre- 
cipitately levied an army of sixty thousand men, says Villani, and 
gave the command of it to Count Robert of Artois, the hero of 
Furnes. The forces of the Flemings amounted to no more than 

A.D. 1302. twenty thousand fighting men. The two armies met near Courtrai. 

Battle of '■ji^e French chivalry were full of ardorj;- and confidence ; and the 
Italian archers in their service began the attack with some success. 
" My lord," said one of his knights to the count of Artois, " these 
knaves will do so well that they will gain the honour of the day ; 
and, if they alone put an end to the Avar, what will be left for 
the noblesse to do?" "Attack then !" answered the prince. Two 
grand attacks succeeded one another ; the first under the orders of 



Battles of Courtrai and of Mons-en-Piielle, 125 

the Constable Eaoul of Nesle, the second under those of the count 
of Artois in person. After two hours' fighting, both failed against 
the fiery national passion of the Flemish communes, and the two 
French leaders, the Constable and the count of Artois, were left 
both of them lying on the field of battle amidst twelve or fifteen 
thousand of their dead. "I yield me! I yield me!" cried the 
count of Artois, but, "We understand not thy lingo," ironically 
answered in their own tongue the Flemings who surrounded him ; 
and he was forthwith put to the sword. Too late to save him 
galloped up a noble ally of the insurgents, Guy of Namur. " From 
the top of the towers of our monastery," says the abbot of St. 
Martin's of Tournai, "we could see the French flying over the 
roads, across fields and through hedges, in such numbers that the 
sight mast have been seen to be believed. There were in the out- 
skirts of our town and in the neighbouring villages so vast a mul- 
titude of knights and men-at-arms tormented with hunger, that it 
was a matter horrible to see. They gave their arms to get bread.'* 

A French knight, covered with wounds, whose name has remained 
unknown, hastily scratched a few words upon a scrap of parchment 
dyed with blood ; and that was the first account Philip the 
Handsome received of the battle of Courtrai, which was fought and 
lost on the 11th of July, 1302. 

The news of this great defeat of the French spread rapidly 
throughout Europe, and filled with joy all those who were hostile 
to or jealous of Philip the Handsome. The wily monarch spent 
two years in negotiations, for the purpose of gaining time, and of 
letting the edge wear off the Flemings' confidence. In the spring a.D. 1304. 
of 1304, the cry of war resounded every where. Philip had laid The war 
an impost extraordinary upon all real property in his kingdom ; aeain, 
regulars and reserves had been summoned to Arras, to attack the 
Flemings by land and sea. He had taken into his pay a Genoese 
fleet commanded by Eegnier de Grimaldi, a celebrated Italian 
admiral ; and it arrived in the North Sea. and blockaded Zierikzee, 
a maritime town of Zealand. On the 10th of August, 1304, the 
Flemish fleet which was defending the place was beaten and 
dispersed. Philip hoped for a moment that this reverse would 
discourage the Flemings; but it was not so at all. A great battle 
took place on the 17th of August between the two land armies at 
Mons-en-Puelle (or, Mont-en-Pevele, according to the true local Battle of 
spelling), near Lille ; the action was for some time indecisive, and p^gn^ 
even after it was over both sides hesitated about claiming the 
victory ; but when the Flemings saw their camp swept ofi" and 
rifled, and when they no longer found in it, say the chxoniclera, 



126 



History of France. 



straggles 
with the 
Papacy. 



Philip the 

Handsome 
curtails 
the privi- 
leges of 
theChurch. 



"their fine stuffs of Bruges and Ypres, their wines of Eochelle, 
their beers of Cambrai and their cheeses of Bethune, " they 
declared that they would return to their hearths ; and their leaders, 
■unable to restrain them, were obliged to shut themselves up in 
Lille, whither Philip, who had himself retired at first to Arras, 
came to besiege them. Thus during ten years, from 1305 to 1314, 
there was between France and Flanders a continual alternation of 
reciprocal concessions and retractions, of treaties concluded and of 
renewed insurrections without decisive and ascertained results. It 
was neither peace nor war ; and, after the death of Philip the 
Handsome, his successors were destined for a long time to come to 
find again and again amongst the Flemish communes deadly enmities 
and grievous perils. 

At the same time that he was prosecuting this interminable war 
against the Flemings, Philip was engaged, in this case also beyond 
the boundaries of his kingdom, in a struggle which was still more 
serious owing to the nature of the questions which gave rise to it 
and to the quality of his adversary. The French kingship and 
papacy, the representatives of which had but lately been great and 
glorious princes such as Philip Augustus and St. Louis, Gregory VII. 
and Innocent. III., were, at the end of the thirteenth century, 
vested in the persons of men of far less moral worth and less 
political wisdom,' Philip the Handsome and Boniface VIIL We 
have already had glimpses of Philip the Handsome's greedy, rug- 
gedly obstinate, haughty and tyrannical character ; and Boni- 
face YIII. had the same defects, with more hastiness and less 
ability. Philip the Handsome had been nine years king when 
Boniface VIIL became pope. On his accession to the throne he 
had testified an intention of curtailing the privileges and power of 
the Church. He had removed the clergy from judicial functions, 
in the domains of the lords as well as in the domain of the king, 
and he had every where been putting into the hands of laymen the 
administration of civil justice. He had considerably increased the 
per centage to be paid on real property acquired by the Church 
(called possessions in mortmain), by way of compensation for the 
mutation- dues which their fixity caused the State to lose. At the 
time of the crusades the property of the clergy had been subjected 
to a special tax of a tenth of the revenues, and this tax had been 
several times renewed for reasons other than the crusades. In 1296, 
Philip the Handsome, at war with the king of England and the 
Flemings, imposed upon the clergy two fresh tenths. The bishops 
alone were called upon to vote them; and the order of Citeaux 
refused to pay them, and addressed to the pope a protest, with a 



The King and the Pope, 127 

comparison between Philip and Pharaoh. Boniface not only 

entertained, the protest, hut addressed to tlie king a hidl (called 

Glericis laicos, from its first two words), in which, led on hy his A.D. 1296. 

zeal to set forth the generality and absoluteness of his power, he ^^^^^ ^^^^^ 

laid down as a principle that churches and ecclesiastics could not cos." 

be taxed save with the permission of the sovereign-pontiff, and 

that "all emperors, kings, dukes, counts, barons, or governors 

whatsoever, who should violate this principle, and all prelates or 

other ecclesiastics who should through weakness lend themselves 

to such violation, would by this mere fact incur excommunication 

and would be incapable of release therefrom, save in articulo mortis, 

unless by a special decision of the Holy See," This was going far 

beyond the traditions of the French Church, and, in the very act 

of protecting it, to strike a blow at its independence in its dealings 

with the French State. Philip was mighty wroth, but he did not 

burst out ; he confined himself to letting the pope perceive his 

displeasure by means of divers administrative measures, amongst 

others by forbidding the exportation from the kingdom of gold, 

silver, and valuable articles, which found their way chiefly to 

Eome. Boniface, on his side, was not slow to perceive that he 

had gone too far, and that his own interests did not permit him to 

give so much offence to the king of France. A year after the 

bull Clericis laicos he modified it by a new bull, which not only 

authorized the collection of the two tenths voted by the French 

bishops, but recognized the right of the king of France to tax 

the French clergy with their consent and without authorization 

from the Holy See, whenever there was a pressing necessity for 

it. Philip, on his side, testified to the pope his satisfaction at 

this concession by himself making one at the expense of the 

religious liberty of his subjects. 

Thus the two absolute sovereigns changed their policy and Policy of 
made temporary sacrifice of their mutual pretensions, according ^^^ ^f"^, 
as it suited them to fight or to agree. But there arose a question popg^ 
in respect of which this continual alternation of pretensions 
and compromises, of quarrels and accommodations, was no longer 
possible ; in order to keep up their position in the eyes of one 
another they were obliged to come to a deadly clash ; and in this 
struggle, perilous for both, Boniface VIII. was the aggressor, and 
with Philip the Handsome remained the victory. An opportunity 
for a splendid confirmation of the pope's universal supremacy 
in the Christian world came to tempt him. A quarrel had arisen 
between Philip and the archbishop of Narbonne on the subject 
of certain dues claimed by both in that great diocese. Boniface 



128 



History of France, 



Bernard de 
Saisset, 
bishop of 
■Pamiers. 



was loud in liis advocacy of the archbisliop against the officers 
of the king : he sent to Paris, to support his M'ords, Bernard de 
Saisset, whom he. on his own authority, had just appointed 
bishop of Pamiers. On arriving in Paris as the pope's legate, 
Saisset made use there of violent and inconsiderate language ; Philip 
had, at that time, as his chief councillors, lay-lawyers, servants 
passionately attached to the kingship. They were Peter Elotte, 
his chancellor, William of iSTogaret, judge-major at Beaucaire, and 
William of Plasian, lord of Vezenohre, the two latter belonging, 
as Bernard de Saisset belonged, to Southern France, and de- 
termined to withstand, in the south as well as the north, the 
domination of ecclesiastics. They, in their turn, rose up against 
the doctrine and language of the bishop of Pamiers. He was 
arrested and committed to the keeping of the archbishop of 
Karbonne; and Philip sent to Rome his chancellor Peter Flotte 
himself, and William of Kogaret, with orders to demand the 
condemnation of the bishop of Pamiers. Boniface replied by 
changing the venue to his own personal tribunal in the ease of 
Bernard de Saisset, " My power — the spiritual power," said the 
pope to the chancellor of France, " embraces the temporal, and 
includes it." " Be it so," answered Peter Flotte ; " but your power 
is nominal, the king's real." 

Here was a coarse challenge hurled by the crown at the tiara : 
and Boniface VIII. unhesitatingly accepted it. But, instead of 
keeping the advantage of a defensive position by claiming, in the 
name of lawful right, the liberties and immunities of the Church, 
he assumed the offensive against the kingship by proclaiming the 
supremacy of the Holy See in things temporal as well as spiritual, 
and by calling upon Philip the Handsome to acknowledge it. On 
the 5th of December, 1301, he addressed to the king, commencing 
A.D. 1301. with the words, ^'■Hearken, most dear Son" (Aiisculta, carissinie Jili), 
^^^1 a long bull in which, with circumlocutions and expositions full of 

obscurity and subtlety, he laid down and affirmed, at bottom, the 
principle of the final sovereignty of the spiritual power, being 
of divine origin, over every temporal power, being of human 
creation. The final supremacy of the pope in the body politic 
and over all sovereigns meant the absorption of the laic com 
munity in the religious and the abolition of the State's independence 
not in favour of the national Church, but to the advantage of the 
foreign head of the universal Church. The defenders of the French 
kingship formed a better estimate than was formed at Eome of the 
effect which would be produced by such doctrine on France, in the 
existing condition of the French mind ; they entered upon no theo- 



*' Ausculta 
fill." 



The States-general and the Pope. 1 29 

logical and abstract polemics ; they confined themselves entirely to 
setting in a vivid light the pope's pretensions and their conse- 
Quences, feeling sure that by confining themselves to this question 
they would enlist in their opposition not only all laymen, nobles, 
and commoners, but the greater part of the I'rench ecclesiastics 
themselves, who were no strangers to the feeling of national 
patriotism, and to whom the pope's absolute power in the body 
politic was scarcely more agreeable than the king's. On the 11th 
of February, 1302, the bull Hearhen, most dear Son, was solemnly 
burnt at Paris in presence of the king and a numerous multitude. 
Philip convoked, for the 8th of April following, an assembly of the A.D. 1S02. 
barons, bishops, and chief ecclesiastics, and of deputies from the •'■^^ States- 
communes to the number of two or three for each city, all being convoked 
summoned " to deliberate on certain affairs which in the highest ^^ Paris, 
degree concern the king, the kingdom, the churches, and all and 
sundry." This assembly, which really met on the 10th of April at 
Paris in the church of Notre-Dame, is reckoned in French history 
as the first " states-general." The three estates wrote separatelj'- to 
Rome ; the clergy to the pope himself, the nobility and the 
deputies of the communes to the cardinals, all, however, protest- 
ing against the pope's pretensions in matters temporal, the two laic 
orders writing*in a rough and threatening tone, the clergy making 
an appeal " to the wisdom and paternal clemency of the Holy 
Father with tearful accents and sobs mingled with their tears." 
The king evidently had on his side the general feeling of the 
nation : and the publication of a third bull ( Unam sanctum), which 
threatened him with excommuiiication, only the more irritated 
him ; he resolved to act speedily. JSTotification must be sent to 
the pope of the king's appeal to the future council. Philip could A.D. 1303. 
r.o longer confide this awkward business to his chancellor Peter William of 
Flotte ; for he had fallen at Courtrai, in the battle against the Anat^ni. 
Flemings. William of ISTogaret undertook it, at the same time 
obtaining from the king a sort of blank commission authorizing 
and ratifying in advance all that, under the circumstances, he 
might consider it advisable to do. ^Notification of the appeal had 
to be made to the pope at Anagni, his native town, whither he had 
gone for refuge, and the people of which, being zealous in his 
favour, had already dragged in the mud the lillies and the banner 
of France. Nogaret was bold, ruffianly, and clever. He repaired 
in haste to Florence to the king's banker, got a plentiful supply of 
money, established communications in Anagni, and secured, above 
all, the co-operation of Sciarra Colonna, who was passionately 
hostile to the pope, had been formerly proscribed by him, and, 

E 



130 History of France, 

baving fallen into. the hands of corsairs, had worked at tlio oar 
lor thoia during many a year rather than reveal his name and be 
sold to Boniface Gaetani. On the 7th of September, 1303, 
Colonna and his associates introduced JS^ogaret and his following 
into Anagui, with, shouts of " Death to Pope Boniface ! Long 
live the king of France ! " The populace, dumb-founded, re- 
mained motionless. The pope, deserted by all, even by his own 
nephew, tried to touch the heart of Colonna himself, whose only 

answer was a summons to abdicate, and to surrender at discretion. 
A D 1303 -1 . • 

Teath of * ^^^^^ outraged in spite of his advanced years (he was seventy-five). 

Pore Boni- Boniface maintained a dauntless attitude under the grossest insults, 
face VIII. -b^t died very shortly after. 

On the 2'2nd of October, 1303, eleven days after the death of 
Boniface VIII., Benedict XI., son of a simple shepherd, was elected 
at Eome to succeed him. Philip the Handsome at once sent his 
congratulations, but by William of Plasian, who had lately been 
the accuser of Boniface, and who was charged to band to the new 
pope, on the king's behalf, a very bitter memorandum touching his 
predecessor. Philip at the same time caused an address to be 
presented to himself in his own kingdom and in the vulgar tongue, 
called a supplication from the people of France to the king against 
Boniface. Benedict XL exerted himself to give satisfaction to the 
conqueror ; IS'ogaret and the direct authors of the assault at Anagni 
Vfere alone excepted from the general amnesty. The pope reserved 
for a future occasion the announcement of their absolution, when 
he should consider it expedient. But, on the 7th of June, 1304, 
instead of absolving them, he launched a fresh bull of excommuni- 
cation against " certain "wicked men who had dared to commit a 
hateful crime against a person of good memory, Pope Boniface." 
A.D. 1304. A month after this bull Benedict XL was dead. It is related that 
Death of ^ young woman had put before him at table a basket of fresh figs, 
diet XI. of which he had eaten and which had poisoned him. The 
chroniclers of the time impute this crime to William of ^ogaret, 
to the Colonnas, and to their associates at Anagni ; a single one 
names King Philip. The king of France, who had gained the 
battle of Mons-en-Puelle, then took advantage of his success to 
procure the election of a pope who would be entirely and exclu- 
sively his creature. The archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand de Got, 
proclaimed under the title of Clement V., had to accept, in return, 
Trial and *^® harshest conditions, such as pronouncing the condemnation of 
condem.a- Boniface VIIL, transferring the Papal See from Eome to Avignon, 
tion of the authorizing the suppression of the order of the Knights Templars, 
t3a)plars. etc This last clause cost the new pontiff a great deal of pains, 



The Knights Templars. 131 

and it was with the utmost reluctance that he yielded to it. The 
great wealth possessed by the order of the Temple was the true 
cause of Philip's hatred, but as some plausible cause was needed to 
procure their condemnation, they were accused of heresy, immo* 
rality and sacrilege. The council of Vienne condemned them, but 
the Grand Master Jacques Molay protested of their innocence to the Jacqnes 
■very last ; a poet chronicler, Godfrey of Paris, who was a witness ?°'^7 
of the scene, thus describes it : " The Grand Master, seeing the fire alive, 
prepared, stripped himself briskly \ I tell just as I saw ; he bared 
himself to his shirt, light-heartedly and with a good grace, without 
a whit of trembling, though he W3.s dragged and shaken mightily. 
They took hold of him to tie him to the stake, and they were 
binding his hands with a cord, but he said to them, ' Sirs, suffer 
me to fold my hands awhile, and make my prayer to God, for verily 
it is time. I am presently to die ; but wrongfully, God wot. 
Wherefore woe will come, ere long, to those who condemn us 
without a cause. God will avenge our death.' " 

It was probably owing to these last words that there arose a 
popular rumour, soon spread abroad, that Jacques Molay, at his 
•death, had cited the pope and the king to appear with him, 
the former at the end of forty days, and the latter within a 
year, before the judgment-seat of God. Events gave a sanction to 
the legend : for Clement Y. actually died on the 20th of April, ^•^- 1314, 
1314, and Philip the Handsome on the 29th of I^ovember, 1314; popg cie- 
the pope, undoubtedly uneasy at the servile acquiescence he had ment V. 
shown towards the king, and the king expressing some sorrow for ^^^ ^j ^^ 
his greed, and for the imposts (inaltote, maletolta, or black mail) king of 
with which he had burdened his people. (P^i\2'd\ 

In excessive and arbitrary imposts, indeed, consisted the chief 
grievance for which Prance, in the fourteenth century, had to com- 
plain of Philip the Handsome ; and, probably, it was the only 
wrong for which he upbraided himself. As he was no stranger to General 
the spirit of order in his own affairs, he tried, towards the end of ■p\^]\\^ the 
his reign, to obtain an exact account of his finances. His chief Hand- 
adviser, Enguerrand de Marigny, became his superintendent-general, ^^^l^j^^ 
and on the 19th of January, 1311, at the close of a grand council ment. 
held at Poissy, Philip passed an ordinance which established, under 
the headings of expenses and receipts, two distinct tables and 
treasuries, one for ordinary expenses, the civil list and the payment 
of the great bodies of the State, incomes, pensions, &c.. and the 
other for extraordinary expenses. 

The general history of France has been more indulgent towards 
Philip the Handsome than his contemporaries were; it has 

K 2 



132 History of France. 

exprcnsecl its acknowledgments to him for the progress made, unrleT 
bis sway, by the particular and permanent characteristics of 
civilization in France. The kingly domain rec^ved in the Pyre- 
nees, in Aquitaine, in Franche-Comte, and in Flanders territorial 
increments which extended national unity. The legislative power 
of the king penetrated into, and secured footing in the lands of his 
vassals. The scattered semi-sovereigns of feudal society bowed' 
down before the incontestable pre-eminence of the kingship, which 
gained the victory in its struggle against the papacy. The general 
constitution of the judiciary power, as delegated from the kingship, 
the creation of several classes of. magistrates devoted to this great 
social function, and, especially, the strong organization and the 
permanence of the parliament of Paris, were important progressions 
Deve'op- ii^ ^^i^ development of civil order and society in France. But it 
merit of -yiras to the advantage of absolute power that all these facts were 
■ turned, and the perverted ability of Philip the Handsome consisted 
in working them for that single end. He was a profound egotist ; 
he mingled with his imperionsness the leaven of craft and patience, 
but he was quite a stranger to the two principles which constitute 
the morality of governments, respect for rights and patriotic 
sympathy with public sentiment ; he concerned himself about 
nothing but his own position, his own passions, his own wishes, or 
his own fancies. And this is the radical vice of absolute power. 
Philip the Handsome is one of the kings of France who have most 
contributed to stamp upon the kingship in France this lamentable 
characteristic from which France has suffered so miich even in the 
midst of her glories, and which, in our time, was so grievously 
atoned for by the kingship itself when it no longer deserved the 
reproach. 

A.D. 1314 Philip the Handsome left three sons, Louis X., called le Hutin 

1328 

Eeiffnsof (^'^^ quarreller), Philip Y., called the Long, and Charles IV., called 

Philip the the Handsome, who, between them, occupied the throne only 

, thirteen yeai^s and ten months. iNot one of them distincruished 
some s "^ . . ° . 

three sons, himself by his personal merits ; and the events of the three reigns 
hold scarcely a higher place in history than the actions of the three 
kings do. Shortly before the death of Philip the Handsome, his 
greedy despotism had already excited amongst the people such 
lively discontent that several leagues were formed in Champagne, 
Burgundy, Artois, and Beauvaisis, to resist him ; and the members 
of these leagues, " nobles and commoners," say the accounts, engaged 
to give one another mutual support in their resistance " at their own 
cost and charges." After the death of Philip the Handsome the 
opposition made head more extensively and effectually; and it 



The Salic lazv. 1 33 

produced two results : ten ordinances of Louis the Quarreller for 
redressing the grievances of the feudal aristocracy, for one ; and, 
for the other, the trial and condemnation of Enguervand de Marigny, 
" coadjutor and rector of the kingdom " under Philip the Handsome. 
Marigny was accused, condemned by a commission assembled at 
Vincennes, and hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon which he 
himself, it is said, had set up. 

Whilst the feudal aristocracy was thus avenging itself of kingly 
tyranny, the spirit of Christianity was noiselessly pursuing its 
work, the general enfranchisement of men. Louis the Quarreller . « -„. - 
had to keep up the war with Flanders, which was continually being Emancipa- 

renewed ; and in order to tind, without hateful exactions, the ^^°^ °^ ^^^ 

. <:■ 1 • serfs on the 

necessary funds, he was advised to offer freedom to the serfs of his royal do- 
domains ; accordingly he issued, on the 3rd of July, 1315, an edict mains, 
to that effect. 

Another fact which has held an important place in the history of 
France, and exercised a great influence over her destinies, likewise 
dates from this period ; and that is the exclusion of women from 
the succession to the throne, by virtue of an article, ill understood, _. _ .. 
of the Salic law. The ancient law of the Salian Franks, drawn up, law. 
probably, in the seventh century, had no statute at all touching 
this grave question ; the article relied upon was merely a regulation 
of civil law prescribing that "no portion of really Salic land 
(that is to say, in the full territorial ownership of the head of the 
family) should pass into the possession of women, but it should 
belong altogether to the virile sex." From the time of Hugh 
Capet heirs male had never been wanting to the crown, and the 
succession in the male line had been a fact uninterrupted indeed, 
but not due to prescription or law. Louis the Quarreller, at his 
death, on the 5th of June, 1316, left only a daughter, but his 
second wife, Queen Clemence, was pregnant. As soon as Philip the 
Long, then count of Poitiers, heard of his brother's death, he hur- 
ried to Paris, assembled a certain number of barons, and got them 
to decide that he, if the queen should be delivered of a son, 
should be regent of the kingdom for eighteen years ; but that if 
she should bear a daughter he should immediately take possession 
of the crown. On the 15th of November, 1316, the queen gave 
birth to a son, who was named John, and who figures as John L 
in the series of French kings, but the child died at the end of five 
days, and on the 6th of January, 1317, Philip the Long was 
crowned king at Eheims. He forthwith summoned, there is no 
knowing exactly where and in what numbers, the clergy, barons, 
and third estate, who declared, on the 2nd of February, that " the 



134 History of France. 

laws and customs, inviolably observed among the Franks, excluded 
daughters from the crown." There was no doubt about the fact ; 
"but the law was not established, nor even in conformity with the 
entire feudal system or with general opinion. And " thus the 
kingdom went," says Froissart, " as seemeth to many folks, out of 
the right line." But the measure was evidently wise and salutary 
for France as well as for the kingship ; and it was renewed, after 
Philip the Long died, on the 3rd of January, 1322, and left 
daughters only, in favour of his brother Charles the Handsome, 
Conse- "^^0 died, in his turn, on the Isfc of January, 1328, and likewise 
quences of left daughters only. The question as to the succession to the throne 
law * " then lay between the male line represented by Philip, count of 
Valois, grandson of Philip the Bold through Charles of Valois, his 
father, and the female line represented by Edward III., king of 
England, grandson, through his mother Isabel, sister of the late 
king Charles the Handsome, of Philip the Handsome. A war of 
more than a century's duration between France and England 
was the result of this lamentable rivalry, which all but put the 
kingdom of France under an English king ; but France was saved 
by the stubborn resistance of the national spirit and by Joan of Arc, 
inspired by God. One hundred and twenty-eight years after the 
triumph of the national cause and four years after the accession of 
Henry IV., which was still disputed by the League, a decree of 
the parliament of Paris, dated the 28th of June, 1593, maintained, 
against the pretentions of Spain, the authority of the Salic law, 
and on the 1st of October, 1789, a decree of the National Assembly, 
in conformity with the formal and unanimous wish of the me- 
morials drawn up by the States-general, gave a fresh sanction to 
that principle, which, confining the heredity of the crown to the 
male line, had been salvation to the unity and nationality of the 
monarchy in France. 

We have traced the character and progressive development of the 
French kingship from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, 
through the reigns of Louis the Fat, of Philip Augustus, of St. 
Louis and of Philip the Handsome, princes very diverse and very 
unequal in merit, but all of them able and energetic. This period 
was likewise the cradle of the French nation. That was the time 
when it began to exhibit itself in its different elements, and to 
arise under monarchical rule from the midst of the feudal system. 
The Com- The Cummunes, which should not be confounded with the Third 
munes. Estate, are the first to appear in history. They appear there aS 
local facts, isolated one from another, often very different in point 
of origin though analogous in their aim, and in every case neither 



The Communes, 1 35 

assTiniing noT pretending to assume any place in the government of 
the State. Local interests and rights, the special affairs of certain 
populations agglomerated in certain spots, are the only objects, the 
only province of the communes. With this purely municipal and 
individual character they come to their birth, their confirmation 
and their development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century; 
and at the end of two centuries thej'- enter upon their decline, tliey 
occupy far less room and make far less noise in history. It is 
exactly then that the Third Estate comes to the front, and uplifts 
itself as a general fact, a national element, a political power. It is 
the successor, not the contemporary, of the Communes ; they con- 
tributed much towards, but did not suffice for its formation; it 
drew upon other resources, and was developed under other in- 
fluences than those which gave existence to the communes. The xheir cta- 
struggles which from the eleventh to the fourteenth century gave racter. 
existence to so many communes had no such profound character ; 
the populations did not pretend to any fundamental overthrow of 
the regimen they attacked ; they conspired together, they swore 
together, as the phrase is according to the documents of the time — 
they rose to extricate themselves from the outrageous oppression 
and misery they were enduring, but not to abolish feudal sove- 
reignty and to change the personality of their masters. When 
they succeeded, they obtained those treaties of peace called charters, 
which brought about in the condition of the insurgents salutary 
changes accompanied by more or less effectual guarantees. When 
they failed or when the charters weife violated, the result was 
violent reactions, mutual excesses ; the relations between the popu- 
lations and their lords were tempestuous and full of vicissitude ; 
but at bottom neither the political regimen nor the social system 
of the communes were altered. 

Feudal oppression and insurrection were the chief cause, but not Cause of 
the sole origin of the communes. The first cause was the continu- *^® °'""" 
ance of the Roman municipal regimen, which kept its footing in a Koman 
great number of towns, especially in those of Southern Gaul, Mar- municipal 
seilles, Aries, Nismes, Narbonne, Toulouse, &e. ; as the feudal ° 
system grew and grew, these Roman municipalities still went on 
in the midst of universal darkness and anarchy. They had pene- 
trated into the north of Gaul in fewer numbers and with a 
weaker organization than in the south, but still keeping their foot- 
ing and vaunting themselves on their Roman origin in the face of 
their barbaric conquerors. Under different names, in accordance 
with changes of language, the Roman municipal regimen held on 
and adapted itself to new social conditions. 



136 History of France. 

Part In our own day there has been far too miicli inclination to 

played by dispute the active and effective part played hy the kingship in the 
ship formation and protection of the French communes. IS"ot only did 

the kings often interpose as mediators in the quarrels of the 
communes with their laic or ecclesiastical lords, but many amongst 
them assumed in their own domains and to the profit of the com- 
crerev * munes an intelligent and beneficial initiative. E'er was it the 
kings alone who in the middle ages listened to the counsels of 
reason, and recognized in their behaviour towards their towns the 
rights of justice. Many bishops had become the feudal lords of 
the episcopal city ; and the Christian spirit enlightened and 
animated many amongst them just as the monarchical spirit some- 
times enlightened and guided the kings. The third and chief 

. source of the communes was the case of those which met feudal 
oppression. . 

oppression with energetic resistance, and which after all the suffer- 
ings, vicissitudes and outrages, on both sides, of a prolonged struggle 
ended by winning a veritable administrative and, to a certain 
extent, political independence. The number of communes thus 
formed from the eleventh to the thirteenth century was great, and 
we have a detailed history of the fortunes of several amongst them, 
Cambrai, Beauvais, Laon, Amiens, Eheims, Etampes, Vezelay, &c. 
Decline of "When, however, we arrive at the end of the thirteenth and the 
munes. beginning of the fourteenth century we see a host of communes 
falling into decay or entirely disappearing ; they cease really to 
belong to, and govern themselves ; some, like Laon, Cambrai, 
Beauvais, and Eheims, fought a long while against decline, and 
tried more than once to re-establish themselves in all their indepen- 
dence ; bub they could not do without the king's support in their 
resistance to their lords, laic or ecclesiastical ; and they were not in 
a condition to resist the kingship which had grown whilst they 
were perishing. Others, Meulan and Soissons for example (in 1320 
and 1335), perceived their weakness early, and themselves requested 
the kingship to deliver them from their communal organization and 
itself assume their administration. And so it is about this period, 
under St. Louis and Philip the Handsome, that there appear in the 
collections of acts of the French kingship, those great ordinances 
which regulate the administration of all communes within the 
kingly domains. 

At the very time that the communes were perishing and the 

Else of the kingship was growing, a new power, a new sucial element, the 

Third Third Estate, was springing up in France ; and it was called to 

take a far more important place in the history of France, and to 

exercise far more influence upon the fate of the French fatherland. 



The Third Estate. 137 

than it had teen granted to the communes to acquire during their 
short and incoherent existence. 

It may astonish many who study the records of French history 
from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, not to find any where 
the words third estate; it was at the great States of Tours, in 
1468, that, for the first time, the third order bore the name which 
has been given to it by history. 

The fact was far before its name. The third estate drew its 
origin' and nourishment from all sorts of sources ; and whilst one 
was within an ace of drying up, the others remained abundant and 
fruitful. Independently of the commune properly so called and 
invested with the right of self-government, many towns had privi- 
leges, serviceable though limited franchises, and under the adminis- 
tration of the king's officers they grew in population and wealth. 
These towns did not share, towards the end of the thirteenth 
century, in the decay of the once warlike and victorious communes. 
The majority amongst the ofi:cers of the king were burghers, and Burgher- 
their number and their power were turned to the advantage of 
burgherdom, and led day by day to its further extension and 
importance. Of all the original sources of the third estate this it 
is, perhaps, which has contributed most to bring about the social 
preponderance of that order. Just when burgherdom, but lately 
formed, was losing in many of the communes a portion of its local 
liberties, at that same moment it was seizing by the hand of 
parliaments, provosts, judges, and administrators of all kinds, a 
large share of central power. It was through burghers admitted 
into the king's service and acting as administrators or judges in his 
name, that communal independence and charters were often attacked 
and abolished ; but at the same time they fortified and elevated 
burgherdom, they caused it to acquire from day to day more wealth, 
more credit, more importance and power in the internal and external 
affairs of the State. 

Philip the Handsome was under no delusion when in 1302, 
1308 and 1314, on convoking the first states-general of France, he 
summoned thither "the deputies of the good towns." His son, 
Philip the Long, was under no delusion when in 1317 and 1321 
he summoned to the states general "the commonalties and good 
towns of the kingdom " to decide upon the interpretation of the 
Salic law as to the succession to the throne, " or to advise as to the 
means of establishing a uniformity of coins, weights, and measures ;' 
and the three estates played the prelude to the formation, painful 
and slow as it was, of constitutional monarchy when, in 1338, 
under Philip of Valois, they declared, "in presence of the said 



138 History of France. 

king, Pliilip of Yalois, who assented thereto, that thcro should be 

no power to impose or levy talliage in France if urgent necessity or 

evident utility did not require it, and then only by grant of the 

people of the estates." 

The Third Taking the history of France in its entirety and under all its 

Estate in phases, the third estate has been the most active and determining 

unique * element in the process of French civilization. If we follow it in 

fact, its relation with the general government of the country, we see it 

at first allied for six centuries to the kingship, struggling without 

cessation against the feudal aristocracy, and giving predominance in 

place thereof to a single central power, pure monarchy, closely 

bordering, though with some frequently repeated but rather useless 

reservations, on absolute monarchy. But, so soon as it had gained 

this victory and brought about this revolution, the third estate 

went in pursuit of a new one, attacking that single power to the 

foundation of which it had contributed so much, and entering upon 

the task of changing pure monarchy into constitutional monarchy. 

This fact is unique in the history of the world. We recognize 

in the career of the chief nations of Asia and ancient Europe nearly 

all the great facts which have agitated France ; but nowhere is 

there any appearance of a class which, starting from the very lowest, 

from being feeble, despised, and almost imperceptible at its origin, 

rises by perpetual motion and by labour M'ithout respite, strengthens 

proved by itself from period to period, acquires in succession whatever it 

a survey of lacked, wealth, enlightenment, influence, changes the face of society 

history ^^*^ ^'^ nature of government, and arrives at last at such a pitch of 

predominance that it may be said to be absolutely the country. 

Let us pass to the Europe of the Greeks and Eomans. At the 
first blush we seem to discover some analogy between the pro- 
gress of these brilliant societies and that of French society ; but 
the analogy is only apparent ; there is, once more, nothing 
resembling the fact and the history of the French third estate. 
One thing only has struck sound judgments as being somewhat 
like the struggle of burgherdom in the middle ages against the 
feudal aristocracj'^, and that is the struggle between the plebeians 
and patricians at Eome. They have often been compared ; but it 
is a baseless comparison. The struggle between the plebeians and 
patricians commenced from the very cradle of the Eoman republic ; 
it was not, as happened in the France of middle ages, the result 
of a slow, difficult, incomplete development on the part of a class 
which, through a long course of great inferiority in strength, wealth, 
and credit, little by little, extended itself and raised itself, and 
ended by engaging in a real contest with the superior class. 



National character of the Third Estate. 139 

ITot oiily is the fact new, but it is a fact eminently French, and shown 
essentially national. [N'owhere has burgherdom had so wide and *?^^®^*®°' 
so prodnctive a career as that which fell to its lot in France. There tional. 
have been communes in the whole of Europe, in Italy, Spain, 
Germany, and England, as well as in France. ]S"ot only have there 
been communes every where, but the communes of France are not 
those which, as communes, under that name and in the middle ages, 
have played the chiefest part and taken the highest place in his- 
tory. The Italian communes were the parents of glorious republics. 
The German communes became free and sovereign towns, which 
had their own special history, and exercised a great deal of influence 
upon the general history of Germany. The communes of England 
made alliance with a portion of the English feudal aristocracy, 
formed with it the preponderating house in the British government, 
and thus played, fuU early, a mighty part in the history of their 
country. Far were the French communes, under that name and m 
their daj"" of special activity, from rising to such political im- 
portance and to such historical rank. And yet it is in France 
that the people of the communes, the burgherdom, reached the 
most complete and most powerful development, and ended by 
acquiring the most decided preponderance in the general social 
structure. There have been communes, we say, throughout 
Europe ; but there has not really been a victorious third estate any 
where, save in France. 





CHAPTER Y. 

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 



A.D. 1328. In the fourteenth century a new and a vital question arose 
Philip VI, 



of Valois, 
king of 
Fraoce. 



wiU 

the French dominion preserve its nationality 1 Will the kingship 
remain French or pass to the foreigner 1 This question brought 
ravages upon France and kept her fortunes in suspense for a 
hundred years of war with England, from the reign of Philip of 
Valois to that of Charles VII. ; and a young girl of Lorraine, 
called Joan of Ai-c, had the glory of communicating to France 
that decisive impulse which brought to a triumphant issue the 
independence of the French nation and kingship. 

Some weeks after his accession, on the 29th of May, 1328, 
Philip was crowned at E.heims, in presence of a brilliant assemblage 
of princes and lords, French and foreign ; next year, on the 6 th of 
June, Edward III., king of England, being summoned to fulfil a 
vassal's duties by doing homage to the king of France for the 
duchy of Aquitaine, which he held, appeared in the cathedral of 
Amiens, with his crown on his head, his sword at his side, and his 
gilded spurs on his heels ; and on the 30th of March, 1331, he 
recognized, by letters express, " that the said homage which we did 
at Amiens to the king of France in general terms, is, and must be 
understood as liege : and that we are bound, as duke of Aquitaine, 
and peer of France, to show him faith and loyalty." 

The relations between the two kings were not destined to be for 
long so courteous and so pacific. 



Relations between France and England. I4I 

Philip YI, had embroiled himself with a prince of his line, 

Robert of Artois, great-grandson of Robert the first count of 

Artois, who was a brother of St. Louis^ and was killed duiing the 

crusade in Egypt, at the battle of Mansourah. As early as the 

reign of Philip the Handsome, Robert claimed the countship of 

Artois as his heritage; but having had his pretensions rejected by 

a decision of the peers of the kingdom, he had hoped for more 

success under Philip of Valois, whose sister he had married. 

Philip tried to satisfy him with another domain raised to a peerage ; 

but Robert, more and more discontented, got involved in a series of A.D. 1332. 

intrigues, plots, falsehoods, forgeries, and even, according to public ^^^^^ ^j 

report, imprisonments and crimes which, in 1332, led to his being Artois, 

condemned by the court of peers to banishment and the confiscation sentenced 

J r to banisb- 

of his property. He fled for refuge first to Brabant, and then to meat. 

England, to the court of Edward III., who received him graciously, 

and whom he forthwith commenced inciting to claim the crown of 

France, " his inheritance," as he said, " which King PhOip holds 

most wrongfully." In the soul of Edward temptation overcame 

indecision. As early as the month of June, 1336, in a parliament 

assembled at ISTorthampton, he had complained of the assistance 

given by the king of France to the Scots, and he had expressed a 

hope that " if the French and the Scots were to join, they would 

at last offer him battle, which the latter had always carefully 

avoided." In September of the same year he employed similar 

language in a parliament held at Nottingham, and he obtained 

therefrom subsidies for the war going on, not only in Scotland, but 

also in Aquitaine against the French king's lieutenants. In April 

and May of the following year, 1337, he granted to Robert of 

Artois, his tempter for three years past, court favours which proved 

AD 1337 
his resolution to have been already taken. On the 21st of August j.^^ jjj_ ' 

folloAving he formally declared war against the king of France, and declares 
addressed to all the sheriffs, archljishops, and bishops of his ^^^^^ 
kingdom a circular in which he attributed the initiative to Philip ; France, 
on the 26th of August he gave his ally, the emperor of Germany, 
notice of what he had just done, whilst, for the first time, insult- 
ingly describing Philip as " setting himself up for king of France." 
At last, on the 7th of October, 1337, he proclaimed himself king of 
France, as his lawful inheritance, designating as representatives 
and supporters of his right the .duke of Brabant, the marquis 
of Juliers, the count of Hainault, and William de Bohun, earl of 
Northampton. 

The enterprise had no foundation in right, and seemed to haA'e 
few chances of success. No national interest, no public ground 



142 History of France. 

was provocative of war between the two peoples ; it was a war of 
personal ambition lilce that which in the eleventh century William 
the Conqueror had carried into England. The memory of that 
great event was still in the fourteenth century so fresh in France, 
that when the pretensions of Edward were declared, and the 
struggle was begun, an assemblage of l^ormans, barons and knights, 
or, according to others, the Estates of Normandy themselves came 
Uiid proposed to Philip to undertake once more and at their own 
expense the conquest of England, if he would put at their head his 
eldest son John, their own duke. The king received their depu- 
tation at Vincennes, on the 23rd of March, 1339, and accepted 
their offer. They bound themselves to supply for the expedition 
4000 men-at-arms and 20,000 foot, whom they promised to main- 
tain for ten weeks and even a fortnight beyond, if, when the duke 
of Normandy had crossed to England, his council should consider 
the prolongation necessary. 

His policy. Edward III., though he had proclaimed himself king of France, 
did not at the outset of his claim adopt the policy of a man firmly 

AD. 1340. resolved and burning to succeed. From 1337 to 1340 he behaved 

the title ^^ ^^ ^^ -^QtQ at strife with the count of Flanders rather than with 

of king of the king of France. 

France. jj^ obtained the support of the famous brewer Van Artevelde, 

head of the populace of Ghent, and so a French prince and a 

Flemish burgher prevailed upon the king of England to pursue, as 

in assertion of his avowed rights, the conquest of the kingdom of 

France. King, prince, and burgher fixed Ghent as their place of 

meeting for the official conclusion of the alliance ; and there, in 

January, 1340, the mutual engagement was signed and sealed. The 

king of England "assumed the arms of France quartered with 

those of England," and thenceforth took the title of king of France. 

Then burst forth in reality that war which was to last a hundred 

years ; which was to bring upon the two nations the most violent 

struggles as well as the most cruel sufferings, and which, at the 

end of a hundred years, was to end in the salvation of France from 

her tremendous peril, and the defeat of England in her unrighteous 

attempt. In January, 1340, Edward thought he had won the 

most useful of allies ; Artevelde thought the independence of the 

Flemish communes and his own supremacy in his own country 

secured ; and Eobert d'Artois thought with complacency how he 

had gratified his hatred for Philip of Valois. And all three were 

Victory of (Jeceivins themselves in their ioy and their confidence. A brilliant 

Slnvs 
(June 24). victory which Edward gained at Sluys (1340) struck a serious 

blow at the French navy j a truce followed, which was concluded 



Sticcession to the Duchy of Brittany. 143 

on the 25tli of September, 1340, at first for nine months, and was Treaty 
afterwards renewed on several occasions np to the month of June, (Septem- 
1342. Ifeither sovereign, and none of their allies gave up any thing 
or bound themselves to any thing more than not to fight during 
that interval ; but they were, on both sides, without the power of 
carrying on without pause a struggle which they would not entirely 
abandon. 

An unexpected incident led to its recommencement in spite of 
the truce ; not, however, throughout France, or directly between 
the two kings, but with fiery fierceness, though it was limited to a 
single province, and arose not in the name of the kingship of 
France but out of a purely provincial question. John III., duke of 
Brittany and a faithful vassal of Philip of Valois, died suddenly at 
Caen, on the 30th of April, 1341, on returning to his domain. 
Though he had been thrice married he left no child. The duchy of Succession 
Brittany then reverted to his brothers or their posterity ; but his ^° ^^ 
very next brother, Guy, count of Penthievre, had been dead six Brittany 
years and had left only a daughter, Joan called the Cripple, mar- 
ried to Charles of Blois, nephew of the king of France. The third 
brother was still alive ; he, too, was named John, had from his 
mother the title of count of Montfort, and claimed to be heir to 
the duchy of Brittany in preference to his niece Joan. The niece, 
on the contrary, believed in her own right to the exclusion of her 
uncle. At the death of John III., his brother, the count of Mont- 
fort, immediately put .himself in possession of the inheritance, 
seized the principal Breton towns, Nantes, Brest, Eennes, and 
Vannes, and crossed over to England, to secure the support of 
Edward III. His rival, Charles of Blois, appealed to the decision 
of the king of France, his uncle and natural protector. Philip of 
Valois thus found himself the champion of succession in the female 
line in Brittany, whilst he was himself reigning in France by virtue 
of the Salic law, and Edward III. took up in Brittany the defence 
of succession in the male line, which he was disputing and fighting 

against in France. Philip and his court of peers declared on the ■*-^* ^^*^- 

Decisiou 
7th of September, 1341, that Brittany belonged to Charles of „£ t^e 

Blois, who at once did homage for it to the king of France, whilst court of 

John of Montfort demanded and obtained the support of the king ^ 

of England. "War broke out between the two claimants, effectually 

supported by the two kings, who nevertheless were not supposed to 

make war upon one another and in their own dominions. twe^nJean 

If the two parties had been reduced for leaders to the two de Mont- 
claimants only, the war would not, perhaps, have lasted long. In charlea de 
the first campaign the count of Montfort was made prisoner at the Blois. 



144 



History of France. 



siege of I^antes, carried off to Paris and shut up in the tower of the 
Louvre, whence he did not escape until three years were over. The 
countess his wife all the while strove for his cause with the same 
indefatigahle energy. He escaped in 1345, crossed over to England, 
swore fealty and homage to Edward III. for the duchy of Brittany, 
and imuiediately returned to take in hand, himself, his own 
cause. But in that very year, on the 26th of September, 1345, 
ho died at the Castle of Hennebon, leaving once more his wife, 
with a young child, alone at the head of his party and having in 
charge the future of his house. The Countess Joan maintained 
the rights and interests of her son as she had maintained those of 
her husband. For nineteen years, she, with the help of England, 
struggled against Charles of Blois, the head of a party growing more 
and more powerful, and protected by France. Fortune shifted-her 
favours and her asperities from one camp to the other. Charles of 
Blois had at first pretty considerable success ; but, on the 18th of 
June, 1347, in a battle in which he personallj'' displayed ahrilliant 
courage, he was in his turn made prisoner, carried to England, and 
immured in the Tower of London. There he remained nine years. 
But he too had a valiant and indomitahle wife, Joan of Penthievrd, 
the Cripple. She did foj- her husband what Joan of Montfort 
was doing for hers. All the time that he was a prisoner in the 
Tower of London, she was the soul and the head of his party, in 
the open country as well as in the towns, turning to profitable 
account the inclinations of the Breton population, whom the 
presence and the ravages of the English had excited against John of 
Montfort and his cause. During nine years, from 1347 to 1356, 
the two Joans were the two heads of their parties in politics and in 
war. Charles of Blois at last obtained his liberty from Edward 
III. on hard conditions, and returned to Brittany to take up the 
conduct of his own affairs. The struggle between the two 
claimants still lasted eight years with vicissitudes ending in 
nothing definite, and on the 29th of September, 1364, the battle of 
Auray cost Charles of Blois his life and the countship of Brittany. 
From that day forth John of Montfort remained in point of fact 
duke of Brittany, and Joan of Penthievre, the Cripple, the proud 
princess who had so obstinately defended her rights against him, 
survived for full twenty years the death of her husband and the 
loss of her duchy. 

Whilst the two Joans were exhibiting in Brittany, for the 
preservation or the recovery of their little dominion, so much energy 
and persistency, another Joan, no princess, but not the less a 
heroine, was, in no other interest than the satisfaction of her love 



Joan de Belleville. 1 45 

and her vengeance, making war, all by herself, on the same terri- 
tory. Several ISforman and Breton lords, and amongst others 
Oliver de Glisson and Godfrey d'Harcourt were suspected, nomi- 
nally attached as they were to the king of France, of having made 
secret overtures to the king of England. Philip of Valois had tliem 
arrested at a tournament, and had them beheaded without any 
form of trial, in the middle of the market-place at Paris, to the 
number of fourteen. The head of Clisson was sent to ]!^antes, and 
exposed on one of the gates of the city. At the news thereof, his 
widow, Joan of Belleville, attended by several men of family, her -.r^ . 

neighbours and friends, set out for a castle occupied by the troops the " three 
of Philip's candidate, Charles of Blois. The fate of Clisson was J°^^s-" 
not yet known there ; it was supposed that his wife was on a 
hunting excursion ; and she was admitted without distrust. As 
soon as she was inside, the blast of a horn gave notice to her 
followers, whom she had left concealed in the neighbouring woods. 
They rushed up and took possession of the castle ; and Joan de 
Clisson had all the inhabitants — but one — put to the sword. But 
this was too little for her grief and her zeal. At the head of her 
troops, augmented, she scoured the country and seized several 
places, every where driving out or putting to death the servants of 
the king of France. Philip confiscated the property of the house 
of Clisson. Joan moved from land to sea. She manned seveial 
vessels, attacked the French ships she fell in with, ravaged the 
coasts, and ended by going and placing at the service of the 
countess of Montfort her hatred and her son, a boy of seven years 
of age whom she had taken with her in all her expeditions, and 
who was afterwards the great constable Oliver de Clisson. Ac- 
cordingly the war for the duchy of Brittany in the fourteenth cen- 
tury has been called in history the war of the three Joans. 

Although Edward III. by supporting with troops and officers, A.D. 1340 
and sometimes even in person, the cause of the countess of Mont- Z~^^*^*, 

XrUCBS D6" 

fort — and Philip of Valois, by assisting in the same way Charles of tween the 
Blois and Joan of Penthievre, took a very active, if indirect, share French and 
in the war in Brittany, the two kings persisted in not calling •^^•^ 
themselves at war ; and when either of them proceeded to acts of 
unquestionable hostility, they eluded the consequences of them by 
hastily concluding truces incessantly violated and as incessantly 
renewed. They had made use of this expedient in 1340 ; and they 
had recourse to it again iii 1342, 1343, and 1344. The last of these 
truces was to have lasted up to 1346 ; but, in the spring of 1345, 
Edward resolved to put an end to this equivocal position, and to 
openly recommence war. He announced his intention to Pojie 

L 



146 History of France, 

Clement IV., to liis own lieutenants in Brittany, and to all the 
cities and corporations of his kingdom. The tragic death of Yan 
Artevelde, however, (1345) proved a great loss to the king of 
England. He was so much affected hy it that he required a whole 
year before he could resume with any confidence his projects of 
A.D. 1346. war ; and it was not until the 2nd of July, 1346, that he embarked 
In^sion ^^ Southampton, taking with him, besides his son the prince of 
by the Wales, hardly sixteen years of age, an army which comprised, 
English, according to Froissart, seven earls, more than thirty-five barons, a 
great number of knights, four thousand men-at-arms, ten thousand 
English archers, six thousand Irish and twelve thousand Welsh 
infantry, in all something more than thirty-two thousand men. By 
the advice of Godfrey d'Harcourt, he marched his army over Nor- 
mandy ; he took and plundered on his way Barfleur, Cherbourg, 
Valognes, Carentan, St. L6, and Caen ; then, continuing his march, 
he occupied Louviers, Yernon, Yerneuil, Mantes, Meulan, and 
Poissy, where he took np his quarters in the old residence of King 
Bobert ; and thence his troops advanced and spread themselves as 
far as Euel, Neuilly, Boulogne, St. Cloud, Bourg-la-Eeine and 
almost to the gates of Paris, whence could be seen " the hre and 
smoke from burning villages." Philip recalled in all haste his 
troops from Aquitaine, commanded the burgher-forces to assemble, 
and gave them, as he had given all his allies, St. Denis for the 
rallying-point. At sight of so many great lords and all sorts of 
men of war flocking together from all points, the Parisians took 
fresh courage. " For many a long day there had not been at St. 
Denis a king of France in arms and fully prepared for battle." 

Edward began to be afraid of having pushed too far forward, and 
of finding himself endangered in the heart of France, confronted 
by an army which would soon be stronger than his own. He, ac- 
cordingly, marched northward, where he flattered himself he would 
find partisans, counting especially on the help of the Flemings, 
who, in fulfilment of their promise, had already advanced as far as 
Bethune to support him. Philip moved with all his army into 
Picardy in pursuit of the English army, which was in a hurry to 
reach and cross the Somme, and so continue its march northward. 
A.D. 1346. ■^Yhen Edward, after passing the Somme, had arrived near Crecy, 
Crtcy fi^® leagues from Abbeville, in the countship of Ponthieu, which 
(4ug. 25). had formed part of his mother Isabel's dowry, " Halt we here," 
said he to his marshals ; " I will go no farther till I have seen the 
enemy ; I am on my mother's rightful inheritance, which was given 
her on her marriage ; I will defend it against mine adversary, 
Philip of Yalois ;" and he rested in the open fields, he and all his 



Battle of Crecy. 147 , 

men, and made Ms marshals mark "well tlie ground where they 
would set their battle in array. Philip, on his side, had moved 
to Abbeville, where all his men came and joined him, and whence 
he sent out scouts to learn the truth about the English. When he 
knew that they were resting in the open fields near Crecy and 
showed that they "were awaiting their enemies, the king of France 
was very joyful, and said that, please God, they should fight him 
on the morrow [the day after Friday, Aug. 25, 1346]. 

On Saturday, the 26th of August, after having heard 
mass, Philip started from Abbeville with all his barons. The 
battle began with an attack by 15,000 Genoese bowmen, who 
marched forward, and leaped thrice with a great cry : their arrows 
did little execution, as the strings of their bows had been jj^g 
relaxed by the damp ; the English archers now taking their tienoese 
bows from their cases, poured forth a shower of arrows upon this ^^g--^ 
multittide, and soon threw them into confusion : the Genoese falling 
back upon the French cavalry, were by them cut to pieces, and 
being allowed no passage, were thus prevented from again forming 
in the rear : this absurd inhumanity lost the battle, as the young 
Prince of Wales, taking advantage of the irretrievable disorder, 
led on his line at once to the charge. " J^o one can describe or 
imagine," says Froissart, "the bad management and disorder of the 
French army, though their troops were out of number." Philip 
was led from the field by John of Hainault, and he rode till he 
came to the walls of the castle of Broye, where he found the gates 
shut : ordering the governor to be summoned, when the latter en- 
quired, it being dark, who it was that called at so late an hour, he 
answered :" Open, open, governor; it is the fortune of France;" 
and accompanied by five barons only he entered the castle. 

Whilst Philip, with all speed, was on the road back to Paris with Siege of 
his army, as disheartened as its king, and more disordeily in retreat (Septem 
than it had been in battle, Edward was hastening, with ardour and ber 3). 
intelligence, to reap the fruits of his victory. ' In the difficult war 
of conquest he had undertaken, what was clearly of most importance 
to him was to possess on the coast of prance, as near as possible to 
England, a place Avhich he might make, in his operations by land 
and sea, a point of arrival and departure, of occupancy, of pro- 
visioning and of secure refuge. Calais exactly fulfilled these con- 
ditions. On arriving before the place, September 3rd, 1346, 
Edward ** immediately had built all round it," says Froissart, 
"houses and dwelling-places of solid carpentry and arranged in 
streets as if he were to remain there for ten or twelve years, for hia 
intention was not to leave it winter or summer, whatever time and 

L 2 



143 History of France. 

whatever trouble Le must spend and take. He called tliis new 
town Villeneuve la Hardie ; and lie had therein all things necessary 
for an army, and more too, as a place appointed for the holding of 
a market on "Wednesday and Saturday ; and therein were mercers' 
shops and butchers' shops, and stores for the sale of cloth and 
bread and all other necessaries. King Edward did not have the 
city of Calais assaulted by his men, well knowing that he would 
lose his pains, but said he would starve it out, however long a time 
it might cost him, if King Philip of France did not come to fight 
him again, and raise the siege." 

Calais had for its governor John de Vienne, a valiant and faithful 
Burgundian knight, " the which seeing," says Froissart, " that the 
king of England was making every sacrifice to keep up the siege, 
ordered that all sorts of small folk, who had no provisions, should 
quit the city without further notice. The Calaisians endured for 
eleven months all the sufferings arising from isolation and famine. 
The king of France made two attempts to relieve them. On the 
20th of May, 1347, he assembled his troops at Amiens; but they 
were not ready to march till about the middle of July, and as long 
before as the 23rd of June a French fleet of ten galleys and thirty- 
five transports had been driven off by the English. 

When the people of Calais saw that all hope of a rescue had 
slipped from them, they held a council, resigned themselves to offer 
submission to the king of England rather than die of hunger, and 
begged their governor, John de Vienne, to enter into negotiations 
for that purpose with the besiegers. Walter de Manny, instructed 
by Edward to reply to these overtures, said to John de Vienne, 
*'The king's intent is that ye put yourselves at his free will to ransom 
or put to death such as it shall please him ; the people of Calais 
have caused him so great displeasure, cost him so much money and 
lost him so many men, that it is not astonishing if that weighs 
heavily upon him." In his final answer to the petition of the 
unfortunate inhabitants, Edward said, " Go, Walter, to them of 
Calais, and tell the governor that the greatest grace they can find 
in my sight is that six of the most notable burghers come forth 
from their town bare-headed, bare-footed, with ropes round their 
necks and with the keys of the town and castle in their hands. 
With them I will do according to my will, and the rest I will receive 
Eustace de to mercy." It is well known how the king would have put to 
St. Pierre, death Eustace de St. Pierre and his companions, and how thoir 
lives were spared at the intercession of Queen Philippa. 

Eustace, more concerned for the interests of his own town than 
for those of France, and being more of a Calaisian burgher than a 



The Plague. — Death of Philip VI. 149 

national patriot, showed no hesitation, for all that appears, in 
serving, as a subject of the king of England, his native city for 
which he had shown himself so ready to die. At his death, which 
happened in 1351, his heirs declared themselves faithful subjects 
of the king of France, and Edward confiscated away from them the 
possessions he had restored to their predecessor. Eustace de St. 
Pierre's cou'^in and comrade in devotion to their native town, John 
d'Aire, Avould not enter Calais again ; his property was confiscated, 
and his house, the finest, it is said, in the town, was given by King 
Edward to Queen Philippa, who showed no more hesitation in 
accepting it than Eustace in serving his new king. Long-lived 
delicacy of sentiment and conduct was rarer in those rough and 
rude times than heroic bursts of courage and devotiun. 

The battle of Crecy and the loss of Calais were reverses from 
which Philip of Valois never even made a serious attempt to 
recover ; he hastily concluded with Edward a truce, twice renewed, 
which served only to consolidate the victor's successes. A calamity 
of European extent came as an addition to the distresses of France. 
From 1347 to 1349 a frightful disease, brought from Egypt and A.D. 1347 
Syria through the ports of Italy, and called the hlack ■plague or the ^ f 
plague of Florence, ravaged Western Europe, especially Provence 
and Languedoc, where it carried ofi', they say, two- thirds of the 
inhabitants. When the epidemic had well nigh disappeared, the 
sixrvivors, men and women, princes and subjects, returned passion- 
ately to their pleasures and their galas; to mortality, says a contempo- 
rary chronicler, succeeded a rage for marriage ; and Philip of Valois 
himself, now fifty- eight years of age, took for his second wife 
Blanche of Navarre, who was only eighteen. She was a sister of 
that young king of Navarre, Charles II., who was soon to get the 
name of Charles the Bad, and to become so dangerous an enemy of 
Philip's successors. Seven months after his marriage, and on the 
22nd of August, 1350, Philip died at Nogent-le-Eoi in the Haute- A.D. 1350. 
Marne, strictly enjoining his son John to maintain with vigour his pf^,^.^ **■£■, 
well ascertained right to the crown he wore, and leaving his people (Aug. 22).* 
bowed down beneath a weight " of extortions so heavy that the 
like had never been seen in the kingdom of France." 

Only one happy event distinguished the close of this reign. As 
early as 1343 Philip had treated, on a monetary basis, with Hum- 
bert II., count and Dauphin of Vienness, for the cession of that 
beautifid province to the crown of France after the death of the 
then possessor. Humbert, an adventurous and fantastic prince, 
plunged, in 1346, into a crusade against the Turks, from which he 
returned in the following year without having obtained any sue- 



150 History of France. 

AD. 1349. cess. Tired of seeking adventures as well as of reigning, he, on 
Cession of \^q 16th of July, 1349, before a solemn assembly held at Lyons, 
to France abdicated his principality in favour of Prince Charles of France, 
(July 16), grandson of Philip of Yalois and afterwards Charles V. The new- 
dauphin took the oath, between the hands of the bishop of 
Grenoble, to maintain the liberties, franchises and privileges 
of the Dauphiny ; and the ex-dauphin, after having taken 
holy orders and passed successively through the archbishopric 
of Eheims and the bishopric of Paris, both of which he found 
equally unpalatable, went to die at Clermont in Auvergne, in a 
convent belonging to the order of Dominicans, whose habit he 
and of had donned. 

■*^°^A^^"i ^^ *^^ ^^"^® ^^^^' ^^ *^^ ^"^^ °^ ^P^^^' ^^*^' ^^^^^P "^ "Valois 
IS), bought of Jayme of Arragon, the last king of Majorca, for 120,000 

golden cro-wns, the lordship and town of Montpellier, thus trying 

to repair to some extent, for the kingdom of France, the losses he 

John II., had caused it. 

"the good" jjig successor, John II., called the Good, on no other ground 
France than that he was gay, prodigal, credulous and devoted to his 
favourites, did nothing but reproduce, with aggravations, the faults 
His go- and reverses of his father. 

vernment. jje compromised more and more seriously every day his own 
safety and that of his successor by vexing more and more, without 
destroying, his most dangerous enemy. He showed no greater 
prudence or ability in the government of his kingdom. Always in 
want of money, because he spent it foolishly on galas or presents to 
his favourites, he had recourse, for the purpose of procuring it, at 
one time to the very worst of all financial expedients, debasement 
of the coinage ; at another, to disreputable imposts, such as the tax 
upon salt and upon the sale of all kinds of merchandise. In the single 
year of 1352 the value of a silver mark varied sixteen times, from 
4 livres 10 sous to 18 livres. To meet the requirements of his 
government and the greediness of his courtiers, John twice, in 1355 
and 1356, convoked the states-general, which did not refuse him their 
support ; but John had not the wit either to make good use of the 
powers witli which he was furnished or to inspire the states- general 
with that confidence which alone could decide them upon con- 
tinuing their gifts. And, nevertheless. King John's necessities 
were more evident and more urgent than ever : war with England 
had begun again. 

The truth is that, in spite of the truce still existing, the English, 
since the accession of King John, had at several points resumed 
hostilities. The disorders and dissensions to which France was a 



Charles of Navarre. — Invasion of France 151 

prey, the presumptuous and hare-brained incapacity of her new 
king were for so ambitious and able a prince as Edward III. very 
strong temptations. jN^or did opportunities for attack and chances 
of success fail him any more than temptations. He found in France, 
amongst the grandees of the kingdom and even at the king's court, 
men disposed to desert the cause of the king and of France, to serve 
a prince who had more capacity, and who pretended to claim the 
crown of France as his lawful right. As early as 1351, amidst alJ Charles 
his embroilments and all his reconciliations with his father-in-law, eoad, 
Charles the Bad, king of Navarre, had concluded with Edward III. of Navarre. 
a secret treaty, whereby, in exchange for promises he received, he ^^ 
recognized his title as king of France. In 1355 his treason burst 
forth. The king of ]!^avarre, who had gone for refuge to Avignon, 
under the protection of Pope Clement VI., crossed France by 
English Aquitaine, and went and landed at Cherbourg, which he 
had an idea of throwing open to the king of England. He once more 
entered into communications with King John, once more obtained 
forgiveness from him, and for a while appeared detached from his 
English alliance. But Edward III. had openly resumed his hostile 
attitude ; and he demanded that Aquitaine and the countship of 
Ponthieu, detached from the kingdom of France, should be ceded 
to him in full sovereignty, and that Brittany should become all 
but independent. John haughtily rejected these pretensions, which 
were merely a pretext for recommencing war. And it recommenced 
accordingly, and the king of I^avarre resumed his course of perfidy. 
He had lands and castles in l!formandy, which John put under 
sequestration, and ordered the officers commanding in them to 
deliver up to him. Six of them, the commandants of the castles of 
Cherbourg and Evreux amongst others, refused, believing, no 
doubt, that in betraying France and her king, they were remaining 
faithful to their own lord. 

At several points in the kingdom, especially in the northern Success of 
provinces, the first-fruits of the war were not favourable for the vaders' 
English. King Edward, who had landed at Calais with a body of 
troops, made an unsuccessful campaign in Artois and Picardy and 
was obliged to re-embark for England, falling back before King 
John, whom he had at one time off'ered and at another refused to 
meet and fight at a spot agreed upon. But in the south-west and 
south of France, in 1355 and 1356, the prince of Wales at the 
head of a small picked army and with John Chandos for comrade, 
victoriously overran Limousin, Perigord, Languedoc, Auvergne, 
Berry, and Poitou, ravaging the country and plundering the towns 
into which he could force an entrance and the environs of those 



152 History of France. 

that defended themselves hehind their walls. He met ■with 
scarcely any resistance, and he was returning hy way of Berry and 
Poitou hack again to Bordeaux when he heard that King John, 
starting from Normandy with a large army, was advancing to give 
him battle. John, in fact, with easy self-complacency and some- 
Tbe Prince what proud of his petty successes against King Edward in Picardy, 
Soathe ii^° had been in a hurry to move against the prince of "Wales, in hopes 
Trance. of forcing him also to re-embark for England. He was at the 
head of forty or fifty thousand men, with his four sons, twenty-six 
dukes or counts, and nearly all the baronage of France ; and such 
was his confidence in this noble army, that on crossing the Loire 
he dismissed the burgher forces, " which was madness in him and 
in those who advised him," said even his contemporaries. John, 
even more than his father Philip, was a king of courts, ever 
surrounded by his nobility and caring little for his people. When 
the two armies were close to one another on the platform ol 
Maupertuis, two leagues to the north of Poitiers, two legates from 
the pope came hurrying up from that town with instructions to 
negotiate peace between the kings of France, England, and 
Navarre. John consented to an armistice of twenty-four hours. 
The prince of Wales, seeing himself cut off from Bordeaux by 
forces very much superior to his own, for he had but eight or ten 
thousand men, offered to restore to the king of France " all that he 
had conquered this bout, both towns and castles, and all the 
prisoners that he and his had taken, and to swear that, for seven 
whole years, he would bear arms no more against the king of 
France ;" but King John and his council would not accept any 
thing of the sort, saying that "the prince and a hundred of his 
knights must come and put themselves as prisoners in the hands 
of the king of France," Neither the prince of Wales nor Chandos 
had any hesitation in rejecting such a demand : " God forbid," said 
Chandos, " that we should go without a fight ! If we be taken or 
discomfited by so many fine men-at-arms and in so great a host wo 
shall incur no blame ; and if the day be for us and fortune be 
pleased to consent thereto we shall be the most honoured folk in 
A.D. 1356. the world." The battle took place on the 19th of September, 
Poitiers 13^6, in the morning ; here as at Crecy it was a case of undisciplined 
(Sept. 19). forces, without co-operation or order, and ill-directed by their 
commanders, advancing, bravely and one after another, to get 
broken against a compact force under strict command, and as docile 
as heroic. Two divisions of the French, in which were the 
dauphin and two of his brothers, being repulsed, precipitately fled ; 
hut the king himself, with his youngest son by his side, a youth of 



States General. 153 

fourteen, fougM valiantly, and endeavoured to retrieve the disaster 
by strenuously continuing the contest, hut in vain. Left almost 
alone in the field, John might easily have been slain, had not 
every one been desirous of taking alive the royal prisoner. The 
king, unwilling to surrender himself to a person of inferior con- 
dition, still cried out, "Where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales'?" 
At length, giving his right hand gauntled to Denis de Morbecque, 
a knight of Arras, who had been expelled from France for a 
homicide, committed in an affray, he said, " Sir Knight, I surren- 
der." He was taken first to Bordeaux, and then to England, where 
he remained a captive, yet most honourably and considerately 
treated by his victors. 

The Dauphin Charles, aged nineteen, in spite of his youth and his The Dau- 
any thing but glorious retreat from Poitiers, took the title of lieutenant g^^gg ^^ 
of the king, and had hardly re-entered Paris, on the 29th of September, govern- 
when he summoned, for the 15th of October, the states-general of "^^^^ 
Languedoc, who met, in point of fact, on the 17th, in the grea.t 
chamber of parliament. Fresh subsidies were granted, but only on 
very hard conditions. The deputies demanded of Cbarles "that he 
should deprive of their offices such of the king's councillors as they 
should point out, have them arrested, and confiscate all their 
property. Twenty-two men of note, the chancellor, the premier 
president of the parliament, the king's stewards, and several 
officers in the household of the dauphin himself were thus pointed 
out. They were accused of having taken part to their own profit 
in all the abuses for which the Government was reproached, and 
of having concealed from the king the true state of things and the 
misery of the people. The commissioners elected by the estates 
were to take proceedings against them : if they were found guilty, 
they were to be punished ; and if they were innocent, they were at 
the very least to forfeit their office and their property, on account 
of their bad counsels and their bad administration." 

They further insisted that the deputies, under the title of re- Preten- 
formers, should traverse the provinces as a check upon the mal- deBnties 
versations of the royal officials, and that twenty-eight delegates, 
chosen from amongst the three orders, four prelates, twelve knights, 
and twelve burgesses, should be constantly placed near the king's 
person " with power to do and order every thing in the kingdom, 
just like the king himself, as well for the purpose of appointing 
and removing public officers as for other matters." It was taking 
away the entire government from the crown, and putting it into 
the hands of the estates. Finally, they spoke about setting at 
liberty the king of Ji^avarre, who had been imprisoned by King John, 



154 



History of France, 



A.D. 1358 

States- 
general. 
Stephen 
Marcel. 



Mnrder of 
the Mar- 
shals. 



and said to the dauphin that " since this deed of violence no good 
liad come to the king or the kingdom because of the sin of having 
imprisoned the said king of ISTavarre." And yet Charles the Bad 
■was already as infamous as he has remained in history ; he had 
laboured to embroil the dauphin vsfith his royal father; and there 
was no plot or intrigue, whether with the malcontents in France 
or with the king of England, in which he was not, with good 
reason, suspected of having been mixed up and of being ever 
ready to be mixed up. He was clearly a dangerous enemy for the 
public peace as well as for the crown, and, for the states-general 
who were demanding his release, a bad associate. 

In the face of such demands and such forebodings the dauphin 
did all he could to gain time. The next year, however, the states 
under the direction of Stephen Marcel, provost of the merchants, 
and Eobert Lecoq, bishop of Laon, shoAved themselves still more 
severe. Not content with checking the authority of the dauphin 
by setting Charles the Bad at liberty, impeaching the ministers, 
and creating a commission of thirty-six members, chosen from 
amongst themselves, and enjoying all the prerogatives of the 
sovereign, these revolutionists of the fourteenth century entered 
the Louvre by force Marcel ascended, followed by a band of armed 
men, to the apartments of the dauphin, " whom he requested very 
sharply," says Froissart, " to restrain so many companies from 
roving about on all sides, damaging and plundering the country." 
The duke replied that he would do so willingly if he had the where- 
withal to do it, but that it was for him who received the dues 
belonging to the kingdom to discharge that duty. " I know not 
why or how," adds Froissart, " but words were multiplied on the 
part of all, and became very high." " My lord duke," suddenly 
said the provost, "do not alarm yourself; but we have somewhat to do 
here ; " and turned towards his fellows in the caps, saying, "Dearly 
beloved, do that for the whichye are come ; " the mob immediately mas- 
sacred the lord de Conflans, marshal of Champagne, and Eobert de 
Clermont, marshal of Normandy, both at the time unarmed, so close 
to the dauphin that his robe was covered with their blood. The 
dauphin shuddered; and the rest of his officers fled, " Take no heed, 
lord duke," said Marcel; "you have naught to fear." He handed to the 
dauphin his own red and blue cap, and himself put on the dauphin's, 
which was of black stuff with golden fringe. The corpses of the 
two marshals were dragged into the courtyard of the palace, whore 
they remained until evening without any one's daring to remove 
them ; and Marcel with his fellows repaired to the mansion-house, 
ana harangued from an open window the mob collected on the 



The Jacquery. 1 55 

Place de Greve. " "What has been done is for the good and the 
profit of the kingdom," said he ; "the dead were false and wicked 
traitors." " We do own it and Avill maintain it ! " cried the people 
who were about him. 

The house from which Marcel thus addressed the people was his 
own proparty, and was called the Pillar-house. There he accom- 
modated the town-council, which had formerly held its sitting in 
divers parlours. 

For a month after this triple murder, committed with such Bictator- 
official parade. Marcel reigned dictator in Paris. He removed from ship of 
the council of thirty-six deputies such members as he could not *^'^ ' 
rely upon, and introduced his own confidants. He cited the 
council, thus modified, to expi-ess approval of the blow just struck; 
and the deputies, " some from conviction and others from douht 
(that is, fear), answered that they believed that for what had been 
done there had been good and just cause." The king of ISTavarre 
was recalled from IS'antes to Paris, and the dauphin was obliged to 
assign to him, in the king's name, " as a make-up for his losses," 
10,000 livres a year on landed property in Languedoc. On the 
25th of March, the young Prince succeeded in leaving Paris, and 
repaired first of all to Senlis, and then to Provins, where he found 
the estates of Champagne eager to welcome him. In the mean- 
while, an event occurred outside which seemed to open to Marcel 
a prospect of powerful aid, perhaps of decisive victory. Throughout . j. -i^ka 
several provinces the peasants, whose condition, sad and hard as The Jac- 
it already was under the feudal system, had been still further l^^ery 
aggravated by the outrages and irregularities of war, not finding 
any protection in their lords, and often being even oppressed by 
them as if they had been foes, had recourse to insurrection in 
order to escape from the evils which came down upon them every 
day and from every quarter. They bore and would bear any thing, 
it was said, and they got the name of Jacques Bonhomme {Jack 
Goodfelloiv) ; but this taunt they belied in a terrible manner. We 
will quote from the last continuer of William of ]S"angis, the least 
declamatory and least confused of all the chroniclers of that 
period: "In this same year 1358, says he, "in the summer [the 
first rising took place on the 28th of May], the peasants in the 
neighbourhood of St. Loup de Cerent and Clermont in the diocese 
of Beauvais took up arms against the nobles of France. They 
assembled in great numbers, set at their head a certain peasant 
named William Karle [or Cale, or Callet], of more intelligence than 
the rest, and marching by companies under their own flag, roamed 
over the country, slaying and massacring all the nobles they met^ 



156 



History of France. 



Their 
excesses. 



Fat down 
at Mont- 
didier 
(July). 



even their own lords. iN'ot content with that, they demolished the 
houses and castles of the nobles : and, what is still more deplorable, 
they villainously put to death the noble dames and little children 
who fell into their hands \ and afterwards they strutted about, they 
and their wives, bedizened with the garments they had stripped 
from their victims. The number of men who had thus risen 
amounted to five thousand, and the rising extended to the outskirts 
of Paris. They had begun it from sheer necessity and love of 
justice, for their lords oppressed instead of defending them ;. but 
before long they proceeded to the most hateful and criminal deeds. 
They took and destroyed from top to bottom the strong castle of 
Ermenonville, where they put to death a multitude of men and 
dames of noble family who had taken refuge there. For some 
time the nobles no longer went about as before; none of them 
durst set a foot outside the fortified places." Jacquery had taken 
the form of a fit of demagogic fury, and the Jacks [or Good/ellows] 
swarming out of their hovels were the terror of the castles. 

The insurrection having once broken out, Marcel hastened to 
profit by it, and encouraged and even supported it at several points. 
Amongst other things he sent from Paris a body of three hundred 
men to the assistance of the peasants who were besieging the castle 
of Ermenonville. 

The reaction against Jacquery was speedy and shockingly 
bloody. The nobles, the dauphin, and the king of JS^avarre, a 
prince and a noble at the same time that he was a scoundrel, made 
common cause against the Good/ellows, who were the more dis- 
orderly in proportion as they had become more numerous, and be- 
lieved themselves more invincible. The ascendancy of the masters 
over the rebels was soon too strong for resistance. At Meaux, of 
which the GooJfdloics had obtained possession, they were sur- 
prised and massacred to the number, it is said, of seven thousand, 
with the town burning about their ears. In Beauvaisis, the king 
of l^avarre, after having made a show of treating with their 
chieftain, William Karle or Callet, got possession of him, and had 
him beheaded, wearing a trivet of red-hot iron, says one of the 
chroniclers, by way of crown. He then moved upon a camp of 
Goodfellotcs assembled near Montdidier, slew three thousand of 
them and dispersed the remainder. These figures are probably 
very much exaggerated, as nearly always happens in such accounts ; 
but the continuer of William of IvTangis, so justly severe on the 
outrages and barbarities of the insurgent peasants, is not less so on 
those of their conquerors. 

Marcel from that moment perceived that his case was lost, and 



End of the Rebellion, 1 5/ 

no longer dreamed of any thing but saving himself and his, at any Stephen 
price ; "for he thought," says Froissart, " that it paid better to ^j^rdered 
slay than to be slain." Being reduced to depend entirely during (July 31). 
this struggle upoil such strength as could be supplied by a muni- 
cipal democracy, incoherent, inexperienced, and full of divisions in 
its own ranks, and by a mad insurrection in the country districts, 
he rapidly fell into the selfish and criminal condition of the man 
whose special concern is his own personal safety. This he sought 
to secure by an unworthy alliance with the most scoundrelly 
amongst his ambitious contemporaries, and he would have given 
up his own city as well as France to the king of I^avarre and the 
English, had not another burgher of Paris, John Maillart, stopped 
him, and put him to death at the very moment when the patriot 
of the states-general of 1355 was about to become a traitor to his 
country. Hardly thirteen years before, when Stephen Marcel was 
already a full-grown man, the great Flemish burgher, James van 
Artevelde, had, in the cause of his country's liberties, attempted a 
similar enterprise and, after a series of great deeds at the outset 
and then of faults also similar to those of Marcel, had fallen into 
the same abyss, and had perished by the hand of his fellow-citizens, 
at the very moment when he was labouring to put Flanders, his 
native country, into the hands of a foreign master, the prince of 
Wales, son of Edward III., king of England. 

One single result of importance was won for France by the Eesnlt of 
states-general of the fourteenth century, namely, the principle of ^"^^ states- 
the nation's right to intervene in their own affairs, and to set 
their government straight when it had gone wrong or was in- 
capable of performing that duty itself. Up to that time, in the 
thirteenth century and at the opening of the fourteenth, the 
states-general had been hardly any thing more than a temporary 
expedient employed by the kingship itself to solve some special 
question or to escape from some grave embarrassment. Starting 
from King John, the states-general became one of the principles of 
national right : a principle which did not disappear even when it 
remained without application, and the prestige of which survived 
even its reverses. Faith and hope fill a prominent place in the 
lives of peoples as well as of individuals ; having sprung into real 
existence in 1355, the states-general of France found themselves 
alive again in 1789 ; and we may hope that, after so long a trial, 
their rebuffs and their mistakes will not be more fatal to them in 
our day. 

On the 2nd of August, 1358, in the evening, the dauphin 
Charles re-entered Paris, and was accompanied by John Maillart, 



158 



History of France. 



Eecon- 
ciliation 
between 
the Dau- 
pliin and 
Charles 
the £ad. 



King John 
"the good" 
in Eng- 
land. 



who " was mightily in his grace and love." On being re-settled in 
the capital, he showed neither clemency nor cruelty. He let the 
reaction against Stephen Marcel run its course, and turne'd it to 
account without further exciting it or prolonging it beyond 
measure. The property of some of the condemned was confiscated ; 
Bome attempts at a conspiracy for the purpose of avenging the 
provost of tradesmen were repressed with severity; and John 
Maillart and his family were loaded with gifts and favours. On 
becoming king, Charles determined himself to llold his son at the 
baptismal font ; but Robert Lecocq, bishop of Laon, the most 
intimate of Marcel's accomplices, returned quietly to his diocese ; 
two of Marcel's brothers, William and John, owing their protec- 
tion, it is said, to certain youthful reminiscences on the prince's 
part, were exempted from all prosecution ; Marcel's widow even 
recovered a portion of his property \ and as early as the 10th of 
August, 1358, Charles published an amnesty, from which he 
excepted only " those who had been in the secret council of the 
provost of tradesmen in respect of the great treason ; " and on the 
same day another amnesty quashed all proceeding for deeds done 
during the Jacquery, " whether by nobles or ignobles." Charles 
knew that in acts of rigour or of grace impartiality conduces to 
the strength and the reputation of authority, 

A reconciliation then took place between him and the king of 
!N"avarre, whose wife, Joan of France, was the dauphin's sister ; 
" the town of Melun," says the chronicler, " was restored to the 
lord duke ; the navigation of the river once more became free up 
stream and down ; great was the satisfaction in Paris and through 
out the whole country ; and, peace being thus made, the two 
princes returned both of them home." 

The king of l!^avarre knew how to give au appearance of free 
■will and sincerity to changes of posture and behaviour which 
seemed to be pressed upon him by necessity ; and we may suppose 
that the dauphin, all the while that he was interchanging graceful 
acts, was too well acquainted by this time with the other to become 
his dupe, but, by their apparent reconciliation, they put an end, 
for a few brief moments, to a position which was burthensome 
to both. 

While these events, from the battle of Poitiers to the death of 
Stephen Marcel (from the 19th of September, 1356, to the 1st of 
August, 1358), were going on in France, King John was living as 
a prisoner in the hands of the English, first at Bordeaux, afterwards 
in London, and then at Windsor, much more concerned about the 
reception he met with and the galas he was present at than about 



Invasion of France. 1 59 

'tihe afFairs of his kingdom. Towards the end of April, 1359, the A.D. 1359. 
dauphin-regent received^ at Paris the text of a treaty which the ^reaty of 
king hife father had concluded in London with the king of England. 
"The cession of the western half of France, from Calais to Baj'onne, 
and the immediate payment of four million golden crowns," such 
was, according to the terms of this treaty, the price of King John's 
ransom, and the regent resolved to leave to the judgment of 
France the acceptance or refusal of such exorbitant demands. Tho 
indignation of the people was roused to the highest pitch ; the 
estates replied that the treaty was not *' tolerable or feasible," and 
in their patriotic enthusiasm " decreed to make fair war on the 
English." But it was not enough to spare the kingdom the shame 
of such a treaty ; it was necessary to give the regent the means of 

concluding a better. On the 2nd of June, the nobles announced ^.ejected 

. by the 

to the dauphin that they would serve for a month at their own states- 
expense, and that they would pay besides such imposts as should general, 
be decreed by the good towns. The churchmen also offered to pay 
them. The city of Paris undertook to maintain " six hundred 
swords, three hundred archers, and a thousand brigands." The 
good towns offered twelve thousand men ; but they could not keep 
their promise, the country being utterly ruined.. 

Edward III., on his side, at once took measures for recommencing Edwardlll 
the war; but, before engaging in it, he had King John removed inPicardy. 
from Windsor to Hertford Castle, and thence to Somerton, where 
he set a strong guard. Having thus made certain that his prisoner 
would not escape from him, he put to sea and, on the 28th of 
October, 1359, landed at Calais with a numerous and well supplied 
army. Then, rapidly traversing northern France, he did not halt 
till he arrived before Rheims, which he was in hopes of surprising, 
and where, it is said, he purposed to have himself, without delay, 
crowned king of France, But he found the place so well provided 
and the population so determined to make a good defence, that he 
raised the siege and moved on Chalons, where the same disappoint- 
ment awaited him. Passing from Champagne to Burgundy he 
then commenced the same course of scouring and ravaging; but the 
Burgundians entered into negotiations with him, and by a treaty 
concluded on the 10th of March, 1360, and signed by Joan of 
Auvergne, queen of France, second wife of King John and guardian 
of the young duke of Burgundy, Philip de Rouvre, they obtained 
at the cost of two hundred thousand golden sheep (moutons) an 
agreement that for three years Edward and his army " would not 
go scouring and biu-ning " in Burgundy as they were doing in the 
other parts of France. At this same time, another province, Picardy, 



l6o History of France. 

aided by many ITormans and Flemings its neiglibours, "noMes, 
"burgesses, and common-folk," was sending to sea an expedition 
"wliicli was going to try, with. God's help, to deliver King John 
from his prison in England, and bring him back in triumph to his 
kingdom. The expedition landed in England on the 14th of March, 
13G0; it did not deliver King John, but it took and gave over to 
X flames and pillage for two days the town of Winchelsea, after which 
it put to sea again and returned to its hearths. 
Edward Edward III., weary of thns roaming with his army over France 

approaches without obtaining any decisive result, and without even managing 
to get into his hands any one " of the good towns which he had 
promised himself," says Froissart, " that he would tan and hide in 
such sort that they would be glad to come to some accord with 
him," resolved to direct his efforts against the capital of the 
kingdom, where the dauphin kept himself close. On the 7th of 
April, 1360, he arrived hard by Montrouge, and his troops spread 
themselves over the outskirts of Paris in the form of an investing 
or besieging force. But he had to do with a city protected by 
good ramparts and well supplied with provisions, and with a prince 
cool, patient, determined, free from any illusion as to his danger or 
his strength, and resolved not to risk any of those great battles of 
which he had experienced the sad issue. Foreseeing the advance 
of the English, he had burnt the villages in the neighbourhood of 
Paris, where they might have fixed their quarters ; he did the same 
with the suburbs of St. Germain, St. Marcel, and Notre-Dame-des- 
Champs ; he turned a deaf ear to all King Edward's warlike chal- 
lenges ; and some attempts at an assault on the part of the English 
knights and some sorties on the part of the French knights, im- 
patient of their inactivity, came to nothing. At the end of a week 
Edward, whose " army no longer found aught to eat," withdrew 
from Paris, overtures for peace were then made by the Regent of 
A.D. 1360. France, and on the 8th of May, 1360, was concluded the treaty of 
Brfetienv ^^etigny, a peace disastrous indeed, but become necessary. Aqui- 
(May 8). taine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted, in the king of 
England's interest, to an independent sovereignty, together with 
the provinces attached to Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Peri- 
gord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois, and Eouergue. The 
king of England, on his side, gave up completely to the king of 
France Normandy, Maine, and the portion of Touraine and Anjou 
situated to the north of the Loire. He engaged, further, to solemnly 
renounce all pretentions to the crown of France so soon as King 
John had renounced all rights of suzerainty over Aquitaine. King 
John's ransom was fixed at three millions of golden crowns payable 



Annexations of Burgundy. I(5i 

In six years, and John Galeas Visconti, duke of Milan, paid the 
first instalment of it (600,000 florins) as the price of his marriage 
with Isabel of Fraace, daughter of King John. Hard as these 
conditions were, the peace was joyfully welcomed in Paris and 
throughout northern France ; and, on the 8th of July following, 
King John, having been set at liberty, was brought over by the 
prince of Wales to Calais, where Edward III. came to meet hiia. 
The two kings treated one another there with great courtesy. Mean- 
while the prince-regent of France was arriving at Amiens, and there 
receiving from his brother-in-law, Galeas Visconti, duke of Milan, 
the sum necessary to pay the first instalment of his royal father's 
ransom. Payment having been made, the two kings solemnly 
ratified at Calais the treaty of Bretigny. Two sons of King John, 
the duke of Anjou and the duke of Berry, with several other per- 
sonages of consideration, princes of the blood, barons, and burgesses 
of the principal good towns, were given as hostages to the king of 
England for the due execution of the treaty ; and Edward III. 
negotiated between the king of France and Charles the Bad, king 
of l!^avarre, a reconciliation as precarious as ever. In 1362, John Burgundy 

committed the gravest fault of his reign, a fault which was destined annexed to 

. . France 

to bring upon France and the French kingship even more evils and 

disasters than those which had made the treaty of Bretigny a 
necessity. The young duke of Burgundy, Philip de Eouvre, the 
last of the first house of the dukes of Burgundy, descendants of 
King Robert, had died without issue, leaving several pretenders to 
his rich inheritance. King John was the nearest of blood and at 
the same time the most powerful ; he immediately took possession 
of the duchy and disposed of it in favour of his fourth son Philip, 
who " freely exposed himself to death with us and, all wounded 
as he was, remained unwavering and fearless at the battle of Poi- 
tiers." Thus was founded that second house of the dukes of Bur- 
gundy, which was destined to play for more than a century so great 
and often so fatal a part in the fortunes of France. 

"Whilst he was thus preparing a gloomy future for his country 
and his line. King John heard that his second son, the duke of 
Anjou, one of the hostages left in the hands of the king of England 
as security for the execution of the treaty of Bretigny, had broken 
his word of honour and escaped from England, in order to go and 
join his wife at Guise Castle. Knightly faith was the virtue of ^-P- ^^^^' 
King John ; and it was, they say, on this occasion that he cried, returns to 
as he was severely upbraiding his son, that " if good faith were England, 
banished from the world, it ought to find an asylum in the hearts 
of kings." He announced to his councillors, assembled at Amiens, 

H 



1 62 



History of France, 



His death 
(-VprilS). 



State of 
France at 
the acces- 
sich of 
Charles V. 



rifficnlty 
of the 
king's 



liis intention of going in person to England. Shortly after liia 
arrival in London, he fell seriously ill, and died on the 8th of April, 
13G4, at the Savoy; France was at last about to have in Charles V. 
a practical and an effective king. 

In spite of the discretion he had displayed during his four years 
of regency (from 13-56 to 1360) his reign opened under the saddest 
auspices. In 1363, one of those contagious diseases, all at that 
time called the plague, committed cruel ravages in France. "ITone," 
says the contemporary chronicler, " could count the number of the 
dead in Paris, young or old, rich or poor ; when death entered a 
house, the little children died first, then the menials, then the 
parents. In the smallest villages as well as in Paris the mortality 
was such that at Argenteuil, for example, where there were wont 
to be numbered seven hundred hearths, there remained no more 
than forty or fifty." The ravages of the armed thieves or bandits 
who scoured the country added to those of the plague. 

King Charles V. had a very difficult work before him. Between 
himself and his great rival, Edward III., king of England, there 
Was only such a peace as was fatal and hateful to France. To 
escape some day from the treaty of Bretigny and recover some of 
the provinces which had been lost by it — this was what king and 
country secretly desired and laboured for. Pending a favourable 
opportunity for promoting this higher interest, war went on in 
Brittany between John of Montfort and Charles of Blois, who 
continued to be encouraged and patronized, covertly, one by the 
king of England, the other by the king of France Almost im- 
mediately after the accession of Charles V. it broke out again 
between him and his brother-in-law, Charles the Bad, king of 
Kavarre, the former being profoundly mistrustful and the latter 
brazen-facedly perfidious, and both detesting one another and watch- 
ing to seize the moment for taking advantage one of the other. The 
states bordering on France, amongst others Spain and Italy,- were 
a prey to discord and even civil wars, which could not fail to be a 
source of trouble or .serious embarrassment to France. In Spain two 
brothers, Peter the Cruel and Henry of Transtamare, were disputing 
the throne of Castile. Shortly after the accession of Charles V., 
and in spite of his lively remonstrances, in 1367, Pope Urban V. 
quitted Avignon for Eome, whence he was not to return to Avignon 
till three years afterwards, and then onlj' to die. The emperor of 
Germany was, at this period, almost the only one of the great sove- 
reigns of Europe who showed for France and her kings a sincere 
good will. 

In order to maintain the struggle against these difficulties, witliin 




CHARLES V. 



Charles V.^ his family and his ministers. 163 

and without, the means which Charles Y. had at his disposal were The king's 
of but moderate worth. He had three brothers and three sisters ^^^^^^18 
calculated rather to embarrass and sometimes even injure him than family, 
to be of any service to him. Of his brothers the eldest, Louis, 
duke of Anjou, was restless, harsh, and bellicose. He upheld 
authority with no little energy in Languedoc, of which Charles 
had made him governor, but at the same time made it detested ; 
and he was more taken up with his own ambitious views upon the 
kingdom of Kaples, which Queen Joan of Hungary had transmitted 
to him by adoption, than with the interests of France and her 
king. The second, John, duke of Berry, was an insignificant prince 
who has left no strong mark on history. The third, Philip the 
Bold, duke of Burgundy, after having been the favourite of his 
father, King John, was likewise of his brother, Charles V., who did 
not hesitate to still further aggrandize this vassal already so great, 
by obtaining for hiui in marriage the hand of Princess Marguerite, 
heiress to the countship of Flanders ; and this marriage, which was 
destined at a later period to render the dukes of Burgundy such 
formidable neighbours for the kings of France, was even in the life- 
time of Charles V. a cause of unpleasant complications both for 
France and Burgundy. Of King Charles' three sisters, the eldest, 
Joan, was married to the king of Navarre, Charles the Bad, and 
much more devoted to her husband than to her brother; the 
second, Mary, espoused Eobert, duke of Bar, who caused more 
annoyance than he rendered service to his brother-in-law the king 
of France ; and the tiiird, Isabel, wife of Galeas Yiseonti, duke of 
Milan, was of no use to her brother beyond the fact of contributing, 
as we have seen, by her marriage to pay a part of King John's ran- 
som. Charles V., by kindly and judicious behaviour in the bosom 
of his family, was able to keep serious quarrels or embarrassments 
from arising thence ; but he found therein neither real strength nor 
sure support. 

His civil councillors, his chancellor, "William de Dormans, car- and his 
dinal-bishop of Beauvais ; his minister of finance, John de la Grange, "iii"-ster« 
cardinal-bishop of Amiens ; his treasurer, Philip de Savoisy ; and 
his chamberlain and private secretary. Bureau de la Riviere, were, 
undoubtedly, men full of ability and zeal for his service, for he had 
picked them out and maintained them ui Lchangeably in their offices. 
There is reason to believe that they conducted themselves discreetly, ^ 

for we do not observe that after their master's death there was any ,,,j;' 

outburst against them, on the part either of court or people, of that 
violent and deadly hatred which has so often caused bloodshed in 
the history 0/ France. Bureau de la Piviere was attacked and 

M 2 



1 64 



History of France, 



prosecuted, without, however, becoming one of the victims of judi- 
cial authority at the command of political passions. None of 
Charles Y.'s councillors exercised over his master that preponderat- 
ing and confirmed influence which makes a man a premier minister. 
The government of Charles V. was the personal government of an 
intelligent, prudent, and honourable king, anxious for the inVrests 
of the State, at home and abroad, as well as for his own, with little 
inclination for, and little confidence in, the free co-operation of the 
country in its own affairs, but with wit enough to cheerfully call 
upon it when there was any pressing necessity, and accepting it then 
without any chicanery or cheating, but safe to go back as soon as 
possible to that sole dominion, a medley of patriotism and selfish- 
ness, which is the very insufficient and very precarious resource of 
peoples as yet incapable of applying their liberty to the art of their 
own government. Charles V. had recourse three times, in July, 
1367, and in May and December, 1369, to a convocation of the 
states-general, in order to be put in a position to meet the political 
and financial difficulties of France. It was his good fortune, besides, 
to find amongst his servants a man to be the thunderbolt of war and 
the glory of knighthood of his reign ; we mean Bertrand du Giies- 
clin, a Breton gentleman, who had already distinguished himself on 
, the field of battle. Having received the command of the royal 
troops, he inaugurated the new reign by the victory of Cocherel, 
when he defeated John de Grailly, Captal of Buch, the best of the 
generals of the king of Navarre. Charles the Bad lost by this affair 
nearly all his possessions in Normandy. 

Charles V., encouraged by his success, determined to take part like- 
wise in the war which was still going on between the two claimants 
to the duchy of Brittany, Charles of Blois and John of Montfort. 
Du Guesclin was sent to support Charles of Blois ; he entered at 
once on the campaign, and marched upon Auray which was being 
besieged by the count of Montfort. But there he was destined 
to encounter the most formidable of his adversaries. John of Mont- 
fort had claimed the support of his patron the king of England, 
and John Chandos, the most famous of the English commanders, 
had applied to the prince of Wales to know what he was to do. 
*' You may go full well," the prince had answered, " since the French 
are going for the count of Blois ; I give you good leave." The 
battle took place on the 29th of September, 1364, before Auray ; 
Charles of Blois was killed and Du Guesclin was made prisoner. 
The cause of John of Montfort was clearly won ; and he, on taking 
possession of the duchy of Brittany, asked nothing better than to 
acknowledge himself vassal of the king of France and swear fidelity 



The French in Spain 1 65 

to him. Accordingly he made peace at Guerande, on the 11th of 
April, 1365, after having disputed the conditions inch by inch ; 
and some weeks previously, on the 6th of March, at the indirect 
instance of the king of iN^avarre, who, since the battle of Cocherel, 
had felt himself in peril, Charles V. had likewise put an end to his 
open struggle against his perfidious neighbour, of whom he certainly 
did not cease to be mistrustful. Being thus delivered from every 
external war and declared enemy, the wise king of France was at 
liberty to devote himself to the re-establishment of internal peace 
and of order throughout his kingdom, which was iu the most press- 
ing need thereof. 

Charles Y. was not, as Louis XII. and Henry IV. were, of a The 
disposition full of affection and sympathetically inclined towards lomDa 
liis people ; but he was a practical man, who in his closet and in nies.'' 
the library growing up about him, took thought for the interests 
of his kingdom as well as for his own ; he had at heart the public 
good, and lawlessness was an abomination to him. Having pur- 
chased, at a ransom of a hundred thousand francs, the liberty of 
Bertrand du Guesclin, who had remained a prisoner in the hands 
of John Chandos, after the battle of Auray, an idea occurred to 
him that the valiant Breton might be of use to him in extricating 
France from the deplorable condition to which she had been 
reduced by the bands of plunderers who, under the name of Grand 
Companies, were roaming over the land. 

There was, at that time, a civil war raging in Spain between C^vil war 
Don Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile, and his natural brother, ^^ ^^^' 
Henry of Transtamare, and that was the theatre on which Du 
Guesclin proposed to launch the vagabond army which he desired 
to get out of France. 

With a strength, it is said, of 30,000 men, he took the decided 

resolution of supporting Prince Henry's cause, and on the 1st of 

January, 1366, entered Barcelona, whither Henry of Transtamare 

came to join him. There is no occasion to give a detailed account 

here of that expedition, which appertains much more to the history 

of Spain than to that of France. Edward III. in London, and the The French 

prince of Wales at Bordeaux, could not see without serious dis- ^^ }^^ . 

. English la 

quietude, the most famous warrior amongst the French crossing the Spain. 

Pyrenees with a following for the most part French, and setting 

upon the throne of Castile a prince necessarily allied to the king 

of France. The question of rivalry between the two kings and the 

two peoples was thus transferred into Spain ; after several months 

preparation the prince of Wales, purchasing the complicity of the 

king of Navarre, marched into Sjjain in February, 1367, with an 



i66 



History of France. 



A.D. 1367. 
Battle of 
Navarette 
(April 3). 



Sn Gnes- 
clin made 
prisoner. 



aud re- 
leased. 



army of 27,000 men, and John Cliandos, the most able of the 
English warriors. Henry of Transtamare had troops more numerous 
hut less disciplined and experienced. The two armies joined 
battle on tlie 3rd of April, 1367, at Il^ajara or Navarette, not far 
from the Ebro. Disorder and even sheer rout soon took place 
amongst that of Henry, who flung himself before the fugitives, 
shouting, " Why would ye thus desert and betray me, ye who have 
made me king of Castile % Turn back and stand by me ; and by 
the grace of God the day shall be ours." Du Guesclin and his 
men-at-arms maintained the fight with stubborn courage, but at last 
they were beaten and either slain or taken. To the last moment 
Du Guesclin, with his back against a wall, defended himself 
heroically against a host of assailants. The prince of Wales coming 
up, cried out, " Gentle marshals of France, and you too, Bertrand, 
yield yourselves to me." " Why, yonder men are my foes," cried 
the king Don Pedro; "it is they who took from me my kingdom, 
and on them I mean to take vengeance." Du Guesclin darting 
forward struck so rough a blow with his sword at Don Pedro that 
he brought him fainting to the ground, and then turning to the 
prince of Wales said, " Nathless I give up my sword to the most 
valiant prince on earth." The prince of Wales took the sword, 
and charged the Captal of Buch with the prisoner's keeping. 
*' Aha ! sir Bertrand," said the Captal to Du Guesclin, you took me 
at the battle of Cocherel, and to-day I've got you." " Yes," replied 
Du Guesclin ; " but at Cocherel I took you myself, and here you 
are only my keeper." 

The captivity of the Breton commander was not of long duration ; 
Du Guesclin proudly fixed his ransom at a hundred thousand 
francs, which seemed a large sum, even to the prince of Wales, 
** Sir," cried Du Guesclin to him, " the king in whose keeping is 
France will lend me what I lack, and there is not a spinning 
wench in France who would not spin to gain for me what is 
necessary to put me out of your clutches." The advisers of the 
prince of Wales would have had him think better of it, and 
break his promise ; but " that which we have agreed to with him 
we will hold to," said the prince ; " it would be shame and 
confusion of face to us if we could be reproached with not setting 
him to ransom when he is ready to set himself down at so much 
as to pay a hundred thousand francs." Prince and knight were 
both as good as their word. Du Guesclin found amongst his 
Breton friends a portion of the sum he wanted ; King Charles V. 
lent him thirty thousand Spanish doubloons, which, by a deed of 
December 27th, 1367, Du Guesclin undertook to repay: and at 



Irritation against the Prince of Wales. 167 

the beginning of 1368 the prince of Wales set the French warrior 
at liberty. 

The consequences of this unfortunate campaign were soon felt. The Prince 
The expenses incurred for the purpose of carrying it on having °j.ritates^ 
involved the prince of "Wales in great embarrassment, he was the Gas- 
compelled to levy heavy taxes on his newly acquired provinces, cons and 
The Gascons and Aquitanians became irritated. The prince's nians. 
more temperate advisers, even those of English birth, tried in vain 
to move him from his stubborn course. John Chandos himself, 
the most notable as well as the wisest of them, failed, and withdrew 
to his domain of St. Sauveur, in Normandy, that he might have 
nothing to do with measures of which he disapproved. Being 
driven to extremity, the principal lords of Aquitaine, the counts of 
Comminges, of Armagnac, of Perigord, and many barons besides, 
set out for France, and made complaint, on the 30th of June, 
1368, before Charles Y. and his peers, "on account of the 
grievances which the prince of Wales was purposed to put upon 
them." They had recourse, they said, to the king of France as 
their sovereign lord, who had no power to renounce his suzerainty 
or the jurisdiction of his court of peers and of his parliament, 

N'othing could have corresponded better with the wishes of 
Charles V. For eight years past he had taken to heart the treaty 
of Bretigny, and he was as determined not to miss as he was 
patient in waiting for an opportunity for a breach of it. Having 
ascertained the legal means of maintaining that the stipulations 
of the treaty of Bretigny had not all of them been performed by 
the king of England, and that, consequently, the king of France 
had not lost all his rights of suzerainty over the ceded provinces, 
he summoned the prince of Wales to appear before a court of his 
peers at Paris, to be judged as a rebellious vassal. "When the 
prince of Wales had read this letter, " says Froissart, " he shook 
his head and looked askant at the aforesaid Frenchman ; and when 
he had thought a while, he answered, ' We will go willingly, at our 
own time, since the king of France doth bid us, but it shall be 
with our casque on our head, and with sixty thousand men at 
our back.' " 

This was a declaration of war; and deeds followed at once a.D 1369. 
upon words. Edward III., after a short and fruitless attempt at Cha.l-js V. 
an accommodation, assumed on the 3rd of June, 1369, the title of ^^^ 
king of France, and ordered a levy of all his subjects between against 
sixteen and sixty, laic or ecclesiastical, for the defence of England, "^ * ' 
threatened by a French fleet which was cruising in the Channel. 
Profiting by the lessons of experience, Charles V. abstained from 



168 



History of France. 



Success 
of tlie 
French, 



A.D. 1376. 

Death of 
the "Black 
Prince" 
(June 8). 



A.D. 1377. 

and of 
Edwardlll 
(June 21). 



general engagements, conJBining himself to fortifying his cities, laying 
waste the country', and destroying in detail the forces of the 
enemy. Thus it was that an English army, which had landed at 
Calais (1369), and advanced as far as Paris, melted away before it 
had time to reach Bordeaux. Another one, partly ruined by want 
of provisions, was crushed at Pontvalain by Du Guesclin, lately 
named constable of France (1370). At the saine time, the French 
navy, renewed by the wise foresight of the king, and reinforced by 
Spanish ships, gained a signal victory at La Eochelle. These suc- 
cesses and others besides allowed Charles V. to recover from the 
English the greater part of the provinces Avhich they had on th© 
continent. The leading actors in this historical drama did not 
know how near were the days when they woald be called away 
from this arena still so crowded with their exploits or their re- 
verses. A few weeks after the destruction of Limoges, the prince 
of Wales lost, at Bordeaux, his eldest son, six years old, whom he 
loved with all the tenderness of a veteran warrior, so much the 
more affected by gentle impressions as they were a rarity to him ; 
and he was himself so ill that "his doctors advised hiin to return 
to England, Ids oxen land, saying that he would probably get better 
health there. Accordingly he left France, which he would never 
see again, and he died on the 8th of June, 1376, in possession of a 
popularity that never shifted and was deserved by such qualities 
as showed a nature great indeed and generous, though often sullied 
by the fits of passion of a character harsh even to ferocity. " The 
good fortune of England," says his contemporary Walsingham, 
" seemed bound up with his person, for it flourished when he 
was well, fell off when he was ill, and vanished at his death. 
As long as he was on the spot the English feared neither the 
foe's invasion nor the meeting on the battle-field ; but with him 
died all their hopes." A year after him, on the 21st of June, 1377, 
died his father, Edward III., a kmg who had been able, glorious, 
and fortunate for nearly half a century, but had fallen towards 
the end of his life into contempt with his people and into forget- 
fulness on the continent of Europe, where nothing was heaKl about 
him beyond whispers of an indolent old man's indulgent weaknesses 
to please a covetous mistress. 

Whilst England thus lost her two great chiefs, France still kept 
hers. For three years longer Charles V. and Du Guesclin re- 
mained at the head of her government and her armies. A truce 
between the two kingdoms had been twice concluded, between 
1375 and 1377 : it was still in force when the prince of Wales 
died, and Charles, ever careful to practise knightly courtesy, had a 




BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN. 



Constable Du Guesclin. 169 

solemn funeral service performed for him in the Sainte-Chapelle ; 
but the following year, at the death of Edward III., the truce had 
expired. The war prosecuted by Charles V. between Edward 
III.'s death and his own had no result of importance ; the 
attempt, by law and arms, which he made in 1378, to make A.D. 1378, 
Brittany his own and reunite it to the crown completely failed, ^^^^^^s v. 
thanks to the passion with which the Bretons, nobles, burgesses Guesclin. 
and peasants were attached to their country's independence. 
Charles V. actually ran a risk of embroiling himself with the 
hero of his reign ; he had ordered Du Guesclin to reduce to sub- 
mission to the countship of Eennes, his native land, and he showed 
some temper because the constable not only did not succeed, but 
advised him to make peace with the duke of Brittany and his 
party. Du Guesclin, grievously hurt, sent to the king his sword 
of constable, adding that he was about to withdraw to the court of 
Castile, to Henry of Transtamare, who would show more apprecia- 
tion of his services. All Charles V.'s wisdom did not preserve him 
from one of those deeds of haughty levity which the handling of 
sovereign power sometimes causes even the wisest kings to commit, 
but reflection made him promptly acknowledge and retrieve his 
fault. He charged the dukes of Anjou and Bourbon to go and, 
for his sake, conjure Du Guesclin to remain his constable ; and, 
though some chroniclers declare that Du Guesclin refused, his will, 
dated the 9th of July, 1380, leads to a contrary belief, for in it he 
assumes the title of constable of France, and this will preceded the 
hero's death only by four days. Having fallen sick before Chateau- 
neuf-Eandon, a place he was besieging in the Gevaudan, Du Gues- 
clin expired on the 13th of July, 1380, at sixty-six years of age, A.D. 1380. 

and his last words were an exhortation to the veteran captains 5® „ 

1 . , 11^" Gues- 

around him " never to forget that, m whatsoever country they might clin 

be making war, churchmen, women, children, and the poor people (J^^y l^)* 
were not their enemies." According to certain contemporary chro- 
nicles, or, one might almost say, legends, Chateauneuf-Eandon was 
to be given up the day after Du Guesclin died. The marshal de 
Sancerre, who commanded the king's army, summoned the governor 
to surrender the place to him ; but the governor replied that he 
had given his word to Du Guesclin, and would surrender to no 
other. He was told of the constable's death : " Very well," he 
rejoined, "I will carry the keys of the town to his tomb." To this 
the marshal agreed ; the governor marched out of the place at the 
head of his garrison, passed through the besieging army, went and 
knelt down before Du Guesclin's corpse, and actually laid tlie keys 
of Chateauneuf on his bier. The body of the constable was carried 



170 History of France. 

to Paris to be interred at St. Denis, hard by the tomb which 
Charles V. had ordered to be made for himself; and nine years 
afterwards, in 1389, Charles V.'s successor, his son Charles VI., 
caused to be celebrated in the Breton warrior's honour a fresh, 
funeral, at which the princes and grandees of the kingdom, and the 
young king himself, were present in state. The life, character, and 
name of Bertrand du Guesclin were and remained one of the most 
popular, patriotic, and legitimate boasts of the middle ages, then at 
their decline. 
Death of Two months after the constable's death, on the 1 6th of Septem- 
Charles V. j^gj.^ ] 339^ Charles V. died at the castle of Beaute-sur-Marne, near 
ber 16). Vincennes, at forty-three years of age, quite young still after so 
stormy and hard-working a life. His contemporaries were con- 
vinced, and he was himself convinced, that he had been poisoned 
by his periidious enemy. King Charles of Navarre. 
His cha- Charles V., taking upon his shoulders at nineteen years of age, first 
racter. ^^ king's lieutenant and as dauphin and afterwards as regent, the 
government of France, employed all his soul and his life in repair- 
ing the disasters arising from the wars of his predecessors and pre- 
venting any repetition. iSTo sovereign was ever more resolutely 
pacific ; he carried prudence even into the very practice of war, as 
was proved by his forbidding his generals to venture any general 
engagement with the English, so great a lesson and so deep an 
impression had he derived from the defeats of Crecy and Poitiers 
and the causes which led to them. But without being a warrior, 
and without running any hazardous risks, he made himself respected 
and feared by his enemies. At his death he left in the royal trea- 
sury a surplus of seventeen million francs, a large sum for those 
days. lS.<ss the labours of government, nor the expenses of war, nor 
farsighted economy had prevented him from showing a serious 
interest in learned works and studies, and from giving effectual pro- 
tection to the men who devoted themselves thereto. The university 
of Paris, notwithstanding the embarrassments it sometimes caused 
him, was always the object of his good-will. " He was a great lover 
of wisdom," says Christine de Pisan, " and when certain folks mur- 
mured for that he honoured clerks so highly, he answered, * So long 
as wisdom is honoured in this realm, it will continue in prosperity ; 
but when wisdom is thrust aside, it Avill go down.'" He collected 
nine hundred and fifty volumes (the first foundation of the Eoyal 
Library), which were deposited in a tower of the Louvre, called the 
library toiver, and of which he, in 1373, had an inventory drawn up 
by his personal attendant, Gilles de Presle. His taste for literature 
and science was not confined to collecting manuscripts He had a 



Charles VI. and his Uncles. I/I 

French translation made, for the sake of spreading a knowledge 
thereof, of the Bible in the first place, and then of several works of 
Aristotle, of Livy, of Valerius Maximus, of Vegetius, and of St. Au- 
gustine. He was fond of industry and the arts as well as of litera- 
ture. Henry de Vic, a German clockmaker, constructed for him the 
first public clock ever seen in France, and it was placed in what 
was called the Clock Tower in the Palace of Justice ; and the king 
even had a clockmaker by appointment, named Peter de St. Beathe. 
Several of the Paris monuments, churches, or buildings for public 
use were \indertaken or completed under his care. He began the 
building of the Bastille, that fortress which was tben so necessary 
for the safety of Paris, where it was to be, four centuries later, the 
object of the wrath and earliest excesses on the part of the populace. 
Charles the Wise, from whatever point of view he may be regarded, 
is, after Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, St. Lou.is, and PJiilip the 
Handsome, the fifth of those kings who powerfully contributed to 
the settlement of France in Europe, and of the kingship in France. 
He was not the greatest nor the best, but, perhaps, the most honestly 
able. 

Scarcely was Charles V. laid on his bier when it was seen what a j^H 
loss he was and would be to- his kingdom. Discord arose in the Charles VI, 
king's own family. In order to shorten the ever critical period of ^^^ '"'■''^*^ 
minority, Charles V. had fixed the king's majority at the age of 
fourteen. His son, Charles VI., was not yet twelve, and so had 
two years to remain under the guardianship of his four uncles, the 
dukes of Anjou, Berry, Burgundy, and Bourbon ; but the last being 
only a maternal uncle and a less puissant prince than his paternal 
uncles, it was between the other three that strife began for tem- 
porary possession of the kingly power. Though very unequal in 
talent and in force of character, they were all three ambitious and 
jealous. The eldest, the duke of Anjou, who was energetic, despo- 
tic, and stubborn, aspired to dominion in France for the sake of 
making French influence subserve the conquest of the kingdom of 
Naples, the object of his ambition. The duke of Berry was a 
mediocre, restless, prodigal, and grasping prince. The duke of 
Burgundy, Philip the Bold, the most able and the most powerful of 
the three, had been the favourite, first of his father. King John, and 
then of his brother, Charles V., who had confidence in him and 
readily atdopted his counsels ; his father-in-law. Count Louis of 
Flanders, was in almost continual strife with the great Flemish com- 
munes, ever on the point of rising against the taxes he heaped upon 
them and the blows he struck at their privileges. The city of Ghent 
in particular joined complaint with menace, and in 1381 the quarrel 



1/2 History of France. 

became war ; and in N'ovember, of the following year, the king of 

France and his army marched into Flanders in support of the count. 

Several towns, Cassel, Bergues, Gravelines, and Turnhout, hastily 

A.D. 1382. submitted to him ; and on the 28th of November the two armies 

Battle of foun(j themselves close together at Rosebecque, between Ypres and 

betque Courtrai. Twenty-five thousand Flemings fell on the field, together 

(Novem- -vpith their leader, Van Artevelde, the concoctor of this rebellion, 
ber28j. . , . 

whose corpse, discovered with great trouble amongst a heap of slain, 

was, by order of Charles VI , hung upon a tree in the neighbour- 
hood. The French also lost in this struggle some noble knights, 
not less illustrious by birth than valour ; amongst others forty-four 
valiant men, who, being the first to hurl themselves upon the ranks 
of the enemy to break them, thus won for themselves great glory. 

The victory of Eosebecque was a great cause for satisfaction and 
pride to Charles VI. and his uncle, the duke of Burgundy. They 
had conquered on the field in Flanders the commonalty of Paris as 
well as that of Ghent ; and in France there was great need of such a 
success, for, since the accession of the young king, the Parisians had 
risen with a demand for actual abolition of the taxes of which 
Charles V., on his death-bed, had deplored the necessity, and all 
but decreed the cessation. Armed with all sorts of weapons, with 
strong mallets amongst the rest, they spread in all directions, killing 
the collectors, and storming and plundering the Hotel de Ville. 

The " Mai- 'j'l^ey -^yere called the Malleteers. They were put down with as 
leteers " •' . 

much timidity as cruelty. Eeturning victorious from Flanders to 

France, Charles VI. re-entered Paris, he alone being mounted, in 
the midst of his army. The burgesses went out of the city to meet 
him and offer him their wonted homage, but they were curtly 
ordered to retrace their steps ; the king and his uncles, they were 
informed, could not forget offences so recent. Fundamental order 
having been thus upheld, reprisals began to be taken for the out- 
breaks of the Parisians, municipal magistrates or populace, burgesses 
or artisans, rich or poor, in the course of the two preceding years ; 
arrests, imprisonments, fines, confiscations, executions, severities of 
all kinds fell upon the most conspicuous and the most formidable 
of those who had headed or favoured popular movements. The 
most solemn and most iniquitous of these punishments was that 
which befell the advocate-general, John Desmarets. " For nearly 
a whole year," says the monk of St. Denis, " he had served as 
mediator between the king and the Parisians ; but, yielding to the 
prayers of this rebellious and turbulent mob, he, instead of leaving 
Paris as the rest of his profession had done, had remained there, 
and throwing himself boldly amidst the storms of civil discord, 



Clisson murdered. 1 73 

he hail advised the assumption of arms and the defence of the city, 
which he knew was very displeasing to the king and the grandees.'' 
Puhlic respect accompanied the old and courageous magistrate 
beyond the scaffold ; his corpse was taken up by his friends, and at 
a later period honourably buried in the church of St. Catherine. 

Free at last from the surveillance of his uncles, Charles YI. mar- Charles VL 
ried Isabel of Bavaria, whose wantonness was destined to bring the iga^gi ^f 
kingdom to the verge of destruction. ISTow, yielding to the impetuous Bavaria. 
suggestions of his character, he prepared against England a gigantic 
armament, Avhich the delays of the Duke of Berry rendered useless. 
Matters were getting worse in France, when a serious misfortune 
came to destroy the already exhausted constitution of the king, and 
to give up the country to the unprincipled ambition of his uncles. On 
the 13th of June, 1392, the constable, Oliver de Clisson, was waylaid a.D. 1392. 
as he was returning home after a banquet given by the king at the Oliver de 
hostel of St. Paul. The assassin was Peter de Craon, cousin of murdered 
John IV., duke of Brittany. He believed De Clisson to be dead, (June 13), 
and left him bathed in blood at a baker's door in the street called 
Culture- Sainte-Catherine. The king was just going to bed, when 
one of his people came and said to him, " Ah ! sir, a great misfor- 
tune has happened in Paris." "What, and to whom?" said the 
king. " To your constable, sir, who has just been slain." " Slain !" 
cried Charles; "and by whom?" " Nobody knows ; but it was 
close by here, in St. Catherine Street." "Lights! quick!" said. 
the king : " I will go and see him ;" and he set off without waiting 
for his following. When he entered the baker's shop, De Clisson, 
grievously wounded, was just beginning to recover his senses. 
" Ah ! constable," said the king, "and how do you feel ?" " Very 
poorly, dear sir." " And who brought you to this pass ? " " Peter 
de Craon and his accomplices ; traitorously and without warning." 
" Constable," said the king, " never was any thing so punished or 
dearly paid for as this shall be ; take thought for yourself, and 
liave no further care; it is my affair." Orders were immediately 
given to seek out Peter de Craon and hurry on his trial. He hai 
taken refuge, first in his own castle of Sable, and afterwards with 
the duke of Brittany, who kept him concealed, and replied to tlie 
king's envoys that he did not know where he was. The king pro- 
claimed his intention of making war on the duke of Brittany until 
Peter de Craon should be discovered and justice done to the con- 
stable. ' Preparations for war were begun ; and the dukes of Berry 
and Burgundy received orders to get ready for it, themselves and 
their vassals. 

Tho king had got together his imcles and his troops at Le Mans ; 



174 History of France, 

The k'ng and, after passing three weelcs there, he gave the word to march for 
struck Brittany. They had just entered the great forest of Le Mans, when 

ness. all at once there started from hehind a tree hy the roadside a tall 

man, with hare head and feet, clad in a common white smock, who, 
dashing forward and seizing the king's horse by the bridle, cried, 
" Go no farther ; thou art betrayed ! " So unusual an appearance 
brought on a tit of frenzy from which Charles never recovered, and 
which indeed was augmented by a strange accident which occurred 
at a masquerade, some time after. Five young noblemen with the 
king appeared as savages linked together, in a dress of linen, to 
which fur was cemented by the means of rosin : the secret was so 
■well kept, that they remained undiscovered. The Duke of Orleans, 
either from levity or accident, ran a lighted torch against one of 
the party, which immediatelj'^ set his combustible costume on fire ; 
the flame was quickly communicated to the rest; but the masks, in the 
miilst of their torments, crying out " Save the king, save the king !" 
his aunt, the duchess of Berry, recollecting his person, threw her 
robes over him, and by wrapping them close, extinguished the fire. 
One of the mummers saved his life by leaping into a cistern of 
water; but the remaining four were so dreadfully scorched that 
they died. On the king's good days he was sometimes brought in 
to sit at certain councils at which there was a discussion about the 
diminution of taxes and relief of the people, and he showed 
symptoms, at intervals, of taking an interest in them. A fair 
young Burgundian, Odette de Champdivers, was the only one 
amongst his many favourites who was at all successful in soothing 
him during his violent fits. It was Duke John the Fearless, who 
had placed her near the king that she might promote his own 
influence, and she took advantage of it to further her own fortunes, 
which, however, did not hinder her from passing into the service 
of Charles YII. against the House of Burgundy. For thirty years, 
from 1392 to 1422, the crown remained on the head of this poor 
madman, whilst France was a victim to the bloody quarrels of the 
royal house, to national dismemberment, to licentiousness in morals, 
to civil anarchy, and to foreign conquest. 

A.D. 1392 The dukes of Burgundy and Berry being thus in possession of 

—1402. power, exercised it for ten years, from 1392 to 1402, without 
The dukes . j ^ ■> 

of Bur- '^^^y great dispute between themselves, the duke of Burgundy's 
gundy and influence being predominant, or with the king, who, save certain 
the head^ lucid intervals, took merely a nominal part in the government, 
of the During this period no event of importance disturbed France 
Slate. internally. In 1393 the king of England, Eichard II., son of the 

Black Prince, sought in marriage the daughter of Charles VI., 




JOHN THE FEAULKSS. 



The Queen of France and the Duke of Orlea7is. 175 

Isabel of France, only eight years old. In both courts and in both 
countries there was a desire for peace ; the contract was signed on 
the 9th of March, 1396, with a promise that, when the princess 
had accomplished her twelfth year, she should be free to assent to 
or refuse the union ; and ten days after the marriage, the king's 
uncles and the English ambassadors mutually signed a truce, which 
promised — but quite in vain — to last for eight and twenty years. 

Rivalries, intrigues, and scandals of every kind were, in the Intrigue 
meanwhile, disgracing the entourage of the mad king, and bringing j ^r^^^°« 
about the curse and the shame of France. There had grown up Bavaria 
between Queen Isabel of Bavaria and Louis, duke of Orleans, ^^^^ ^^ 
brother of the king, an intimacy which, throughout the city and Orleans 
amongst all honourable people, shocked even the least strait-laced. 
It was undoubtedly through the queen's influence that Charles YL, 
in 1402, suddenly decided upon putting into the hands of the duke 
of Orleans the entire government of the realm and the right of 
representing him in every thing during the attacks of his malady. 
The duke of Burgundy wrote at once about it to the parliament of 
Paris, saying, "Take counsel and pains that the interests of the 
king and his dominion be not governed as they now are, for, in 
good truth, it is a pity and a grief to hear what is told me about 
it." In spite of his malady and his aff"ection for his brother, 
Charles VI. yielded to the councils of certain wise men who 
represented to him "that it was neither a reasonable nor an 
honourable thing to entrust the government of the realm to a prince 
whose youth needed rather to be governed than to govern." He 
withdrew the direction of affairs from the duke of Orleans and 
restored it to the duke of Burgundy, who took it again and held it 
with a strong grasp, and did not suffer his nephew Louis to meddle 
in any thing. But from that time forward open distrust and hatred 
were established between the two princes and their families. In 
the very midst of this court-crisis Duke Philip the Bold fell ill and 
died within a few days, on the 27th of April, 1404. John the J^^^^^*'^® 
Fearless, count of Ifevers, his son and successor in the dukedom of duke of ' 
Burgundy, was not slow to prove that there was reason to regret Burgundy, 
his father. His expedition to Hungary, ending as it did by the 
terrible disaster of Nicopolis, for all its bad leadership and bad 
fortune, had created esteem for his courage and for his firmness 
under reverses, but little confidence in his direction of public 
affairs. He was a man of violence, unscrupulous and indiscreet, 
full of jealousy and hatred, and capable of any deed and any risk 
for the gratification of his passions or his fancies. At his accession 
be made some popular moves ; he appeared disposed to prosecute 



iy6 History of France. 

rigorously the war against England which was going on sluggishly; 

he testified a certain spirit of conciliation by going to pay a visit 

to his cousin, the duke of Orleans, lying ill at his castle of Beaute, 

near Vincennes ; when the duke of Orleans was well again, the two 

princes took the communion together and dined together at their 

uncle's, the duke of Berry's ; and the duke of Orleans invited the 

new duke of Burgundy to dine with him the next Sunday. The 

Parisians took pleasure in observing these little matters, and in 

hoping for the re-establishment of harmony in the royal family. 

They were soon to be cruelly undeceived. 

A.D. 1407. On the 23rd of ISTovember, 1407, the duke of Orleans was 

the^dukeof '^^^I'dered in the streets of Paris by ruffians hired for the purpose 

Orlems by the duke of Burgundy, who openly dared to justify the assas- 

(Nov. 23). sii,ation. 

Yalentine Yisconti, the duke of Milan's daughter, whose dowry 
had gone to pay the ransom of King John, was at Chateau-Thierry 
when she heard of, the duke of Orleans, her husband's murder. 
Hers was one of those natures, full of softness and at the same 
time of fire, which grief does not overwhelm, and in which a passion 
for vengeance is excited and fed by their despair. She started for 
Paris in the early part of December, 1407, during the roughest 
winter, it was said ever known for several centuries, taking with 
her all her children. Dismounting at the hostel of St. Paul, she 
threw herself on her knees before the king with the princes and 
council around him, and demanded of him justice for her husband's 
cruel death. Justice was promised by the chancellor in the name 
of the king, and Valentine even obtained a kind of moral reparation 
during the absence of her deadly foe ; but she died on the 4th of 
Death of ' December, 1408, at Blois, far from satisfied, and clearly foreseeing 
Valentine, that against the duke of Burgundy, flushed with victory and 
uc ess ppgggj^^ jj^ person, she would obtain nothing of what she had asked. 
(Dec. 4). Por spirits of the best mettle, and especially for a woman's heart, 
impotent passion is a heavy burden to bear ; and Valentine Visconti, 
beautiful, amiable, and unhappj'^ even in her best days through the 
fault of the husband she loved, sank under this trial. At the close 
of her life she had taken for devise, " Naught have I more, more 
hold I naught " (Rien ne m'esi plus ; phis ne m'est rien) ; and so 
fully was that her habitual feeling that she had the words inscribed 
upon the black tapestry of her chamber. In her last hours she had 
by her side her three sons and her daughter, but there was another 
still whom she remembered. She sent for a child, six years of age, 
John, a natural son of her husband by Marietta d'Erighien, wife of 
sire de Cany-Dunois. " This one," said she, " was filched from me ; 



The Biirgundians and the Armagnacs. 1 77 

yet there is not a child so well cut out as he to avenge his father's 
death." Twenty-five years later John Avas the famous bastard of 
Orleans, Count Danois, Charles VII. 's lieutenant-general and Joan 
of Are's comrade in the work of saving the French kingship 
and France. 

The duke of Burgundy's negotiations at Tours were not fruitless. 
The result was that on the 9th of March, 1409, a treaty was con- 
cluded and an interview elfected at Chartres between the duke on 
one side and on the other the king, the queen, the dauphin, all the 
royal family, the councillors of the crown, the young duke of Orleans, 
his brother, and a hundred knights of their house, all met together 
to hear the king declare that he pardoned the duke of Burgundy. 
The duke prayed " my lord of Orleans and my lords his brothers 
to banish from their hearts all hatred and vengeance ;" and the 
princes of Orleans "assented to what the king commanded them, 
and forgave their cousin the duke of Burgundy every thing 
entirely." But falsehood does not extinguish the facts it attempts 
to disguise. The hostility between the houses of Orleans and 
Burgundy could not fail to survive the treaty of Chartres and 
cause search to be made for a man to head the struggle so soon as The Bur- 
it could be recommenced. The hour and the man were not long gundiana 
waited for. In the very year of the treaty, Charles of Oileans, Armag- 
eldest son of the murdered duke and Valentine of Milan, lost his nacs. 
wife, Isabel of France, daughter of Charles VI. ; and as early as 
the following year (1410) the princes, his uncles, made him marry • 
Bonne d'Armagnac, daughter of Count Bernard d'Armagnac, one of 
the most powerful, the most able, and the most ambitious lords of 
southern France. Forthwith, in concert with the duke of Berry, 
the duke of Brittany, and several other lords. Count Bernard put 
himself at the head of the Orleans party, and prepared to proceed 
against the duke of Burgundy in the cause of dominion combined 
with vengeance. From 1410 to 1415 France was a prey to civil 
war between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and to their alternate 
successes and reverses brought about by the unscrupulous employ- 
ment of the most odious and desperate means. The Burgundians 
had generally the advantage in the struggle, for Paris was chiefly 
the centre of it, and their influence was predominant there. Their 
principal allies there, says the chronicle, were the butchers, the 
boldest and most ambitious corporation in the city; and they numbered 
amongst their most active associates one, Caboche, a flayer of beasts in 
the shambles of Hotel-Dieu, and master John de Troyes, a surgeon 
with a talent for speaking. Their company consisted of prentice- 
butchers, medical students, skinners, tailors, and every kind of lewd 

N 



1^8 History of France. 

fellows. "When any body caused their displeasure they said, 'Here's 
an Armagnac,' and despatched him on the spot, and plundered his 
house, or dragged him off to prison to pay dear for his release. The 
rich burgesses lived in fear and peril. More than three hundred 
of them went off to Melun with the provost of tradesmen, who 
could no longer answer for the tranquillity of the city. The 
Armagnacs, in spite of their general inferiority, sometimes got the 
upper hand, and did not then behave with much more discretion 
Vichsi- than the others. Eager to avenge themselves on the men of the 
tuues of north for all the misfortunes their own ancestors had endured during 
the Strug- ^^^ crusade of the Albigenses, the Armagnacs, distinguished by a 
wliite scarf fastened on the right shoulder, marched towards Paris 
and laid waste all the provinces on the banks of the Seine. 
Masters of the metropolis, the Burgundians were enabled to 
retaliate severely upon the Armagnacs, and even to drive them 
southwards. Both parties were anxious to secure the support of 
the king of England. The Armagnacs had promised the half of 
Erance to Henry, and thus induced him to espouse their quarrel. 
The duke of Burgundy however, and Charles II. whom he had in 
his power, declared them enemies of the State, and besieged them in 
the city of Bourges (1412). There a peace was concluded, but 
proved of very short duration. The death of Henry of Lancaster, 
by lessening the immediate chances of a foreign war, rendered the 
conflict at home much more terrible. 

This time, and after the useless assembly of the States-general in 

1413, the Cabochians committed such excesses in Paris, that the 

citizens came to an understanding to expel them. The Armagnacs 

immediately entered the metropolis, and not only maintained 

themselves there, but, commanded by Charles VI., pursued their 

enemies as far as Arras. There they consented to sign a treaty of 

peace by virtue of which John the Fearless pledged himself to 

break off his recent alliance with the English (1414). The next 

year Henry V. started upon an expedition for the purpose of 

A.D. 1415. claiming the execution of the treaty of Bretigny. The two armies 

Battle of met in the plains of Agincourt (25th October, 1415), where a 

(Oct 25). inost terrible battle took place. 

It was a monotonous and lamentable repetition of the disasters 
of Crecy and Poitiers ; disasters almost inevitable, owing to the in- 
capacity of the leaders, and ever the same defects on the part of 
the French nobility, defects which rendered their valorous and 
generous qualities not only fruitless but fatal. liever had that 
nobility been more numerous and more brilliant than in this pre- 
meditated struggle. On the eve of the battle, marshal de Boucicaut 



Agittcourt. — State of France. 1 79 

had armed five hundred new knights ; the greater part passed the 
night on horseback, under arms, on ground soaked witli rain ; and 
men and horses were ah'eady distressed in the morning, when the 
battle began. It were tedious to describe the faulty manoeuvres of 
the French army and their deplorable consequences on that day. 
Never was battle more stubborn or defeat more complete and 
bloody. Eight thousand men of family, amongst whom were a 
hundred and twenty lords bearing their own banners, were left on Its resalts. 
the field af battle. The duke of Brabant, the count of Severs, 
the duke of Bar, the duke of Alen^on, and the constable 
D'Albret were killed. The duke of Orleans was dragged out 
wounded from under the dead. When Henry V., after having 
spent several hours on the field of battle, retired to his quarters, 
he was told that the duke of Orleans would neither eat nor drink. 
He went to see him. " What fare, cousin 1 " said he. " Good, my 
lord." Why will ye not eat or drink 1" "I wish to fast." 
" Cousin," said the king gently, " make good cheer : if God has 
granted me grace to gain the victory, I know it is not owing to my public feel- 
deserts ; I believe that God wished to punish the French ; and, if i"& i"! 
all I have heard is true, it is no wonder, for i]i&y s&y that never 
were seen disorder, licentiousness, sins, and vices like what is going 
on in France just now. Surely God did well to be angry." It 
appears that the king of England's feeling was that also of many 
amongst the people of France. " On reflecting upon this cruel 
mishap," says the monk of St. Denis, " all the inhabitants of the 
kingdom, men and women, said, ' In what evil days are we come into 
this world that we should be witnesses of such confusion and shame ! "* 
These successes of the king of England were so many reverses 
and perils for the count of Armagnac. He had in his hands Paris, 
the king, and the dauphin; in the people's eyes the responsibility 
of government and of events rested on his shoulders ; and at one 
time he was doing nothing, at another he was unsuccessful in what Success of 
he did. ' Whilst Henry V. was becoming master of nearly all the tlie En. 
towns of Normandy, the constable, with the king in his army, was ° 
besieging Senlis ; and he was obliged to raise the siege. The 
legates of Pope Martin V. had set about establishing peace between 
the Burgundians and Armagnacs as well as between France and 
England ; they had prepared on the basis of the treaty of Arras a 
new treaty with which a great part of the country and even of the 
burgesses of Paris showed themselves well pleased ; but the con- 
stable had it rejected on the ground of its being adverse to the 
interests of the king and of France ; and his friend, the chancellor, 
Henry de Marie, declared that, if the king were disposed to sign it, 

N 2 



I So 



History of France, 



A.D. 1418 
The Bur- 
gundians 
i 1 Paris. 
Terrinet 
Leclerc. 



Henry ne. 

gotiates. 



he would have to seal it himself, for that as for him, the chancellor, 
he certainly would not seal it. Bernard of Armagnac and his con- 
fidential friend, Tanneguy Duchatel, a Breton nobleman, provost of 
Paris, were hard and haughty. When a complaint was made to 
them of any violent procedure, they woiild answer, " What business 
had you there ] If it were the Burgundians, j^ou would make no 
complaint." The Parisian population was becoming every day more 
Burguiidian. In the latter days of May, 1418, a plot was con- 
trived for opening to the Burgundians one of the gates of Paris. 
Perrinet Leclerc, son of a rich iron-merchant having influence in 
the quarter of St. Germain des Pres, stole the keys from under the 
bolster of his father's bed ; a troop of Burgundian men-at-arms 
came in, and they were immediately joined by a troop of Parisians. 
They spr;'ad over the city, shouting, " Our Lady of peace ! Hurrah 
for the king ! Hurrah for Burgundy ! Let all who wish for peace 
take arms and follow us ! " The people swarmed from the houses 
and followed them accordingly. The Armagnacs were surprised 
and seized with alarm. Tanneguy Duchatel, a man of prompt 
and resolute spirit, ran to the dauphin's, wrapped him in his bed- 
clothes, and carried him off to the Bastille, where he shut him up 
with several of his partisans. The count of Armagnac, towards 
whose house the multitude thronged, left by a back-door and took 
refuge at a mason's where he believed himself secure. In a few 
hours the Burgundians were masters of Paris. Their chief, the 
lord of Isle-Adam, had the doors of the hostel of St. Paul broken 
in, and presented himself before the king. " How fares my cousin 
of Burgundy % " said Charles VI., " I have not seen him for some 
time." That was all he said. He was set on horseback and 
marched through the streets. He showed no astonishment at any- 
thing ; he had all but lost memory as well as reason, and no longer 
knew the difference between Armagnac and Burgundian. A devoted 
Burgundian, sire Guy de Bar, was named provost of Paris in the 
place of Tanneguy Duchatel. 

Henry of England negotiated with both parties ; but though Bur- 
gundy and the queen having possession of the person of the afflicted 
sovereign carried the appearance of legal authority, every Frenchman 
who paid any regard to the true interests of his country adhered to 
the dauphin. Prom the enmity of the contending factions, a cir- 
cumstance occurred which facilitated Henry's views more readily 
than he could possibly have anticipated. A simulated reconcilia- 
tion having taken place between the duke of Burgundy and the 
dauphin, an interview was appointed on the bridge of the town 
of Montereau. 



The Duke of Burgundy murdered l8l 

In the duke's household many of his most devoted servants were 
opposed to this meeting; the place, they said, had been chosen by, 
and would be under the ordering of the dauphin's people, of the 
old servants of the duke of Orleans and the count of Armagnac. 
At the same time four successive messages came from Paris urging 
the duke to make the plunge ; and at last he took his resolution. 
" It is my duty," said he, " to risk my person in order to get at ^ j) 1419, 
so great a blessing as peace. Whatever happens, my wish is Interview 
peace. If they kill me, I shall die a martyr. Peace being made, I fereaiT" 
will take the men of my lord the dauphin to go and fight the 
English. He has some good men of war and some sagacious 
captains, Tanneguy and Barbazan are valiant knights. Then we 
shall see "which is the better man, Jack (Hannotin) of Flanders or 
Henry of Lancaster," He set out for Bray on the 10th of Sep- 
tember, 1419, and arrived about two o'clock before Montereau. 
Tanneguy Duchatel came and met him there. " Well," said the 
duke, " on your assurance we are come to see my lord the dauphin, 
supposing that he is quite willing to keep the peace between him- 
self and us as we also will keep it, all ready to serve him according 
to his wishes." "My most dread lord," answered Tanneguy, 
" have ye no fear ; my lord is well pleased with you, and desires 
henceforth to govern himself according to your counsels. You have 
about him good friends who serve you well," A conversation 
then took place between the dauphin and the duke, the former re- 
proaching the latter with his inertness against the English, and 
with his alliances amongst the promoters of civil war. The con- 
versation was becoming more and more acrid and biting, " In so 
doing," added the dauphin, " you were wanting to your duty." 
" My lord," replied the duke, " I did only what it was my duty to 
do." " Yes, you were wanting," repeated Charles, " No" replied 
the duke. It was probably at these words that, the lookers-on also t^e^ciuke^of 
waxing wroth, Tanneguy Duchatel told the duke that the time Burgundy 
had come for expiating the murder of the duke of Orleans, which (^^P'* *'')• 
none of them had forgotten, and raised his battle-axe to strike 
the duke. Sire de I^availles, who happened to be at his master's 
side, arrested the weapon ; but, on the other hand, the viscount of 
ZS^arbonne raised his over Navailles, saying, " Whoever stirs, is a 
dead man," At this moment, it is said, the mob which was throng- 
ing before the barriers at the end of the bridge heard cries of 
" Alarm ! slay, slay." Tanneguy had struck and felled the duke ; 
several others ran their swords into him ; and he expired. The 
dauphin had withdrawn from the scene and gone back into the town. 
After his departure his partisans forced the barrier, charged the 



1 82 



History of France. 



Prelimi- 
naries of 
peace. 



A.D. 1420 
Peace of 
Troyes 
(May 31). 



dumbfounded Burgundians, sent them flying along the road to Bray, 
and returning on to the bridge would have cast the body of Duke 
John, after stripping it, into the river ; but the minister of Mon- 
tereau withstood them and had it carried to a mill near the bridge. 
" l^ext day he was put in a pauper's shell, with nothing on but his 
shirt and drawers, and was subsequently interred at the church of 
Notre-Dame de Montereau, without winding-sheet and without pall 
over his grave." 

Henry V., king of England, as soon as he heard about the murder 
of Duke John, set himself to work to derive from it all the advan- 
tages he anticipated. " A great loss," said he, "is the duke of Bur- 
gundy ; he was a good and true knight and an honourable prince ; 
but through his death we are by God's help at the suinmit of our 
wishes. We shall thus, in spite of all Frenchmen, possess dame 
Catherine, whom we have so much desired." As early as the 24th 
of September, 1419, Henry V. gave full powers to certain of his 
people to treat " with the illustrious city of Paris and the other 
towns in adherence to the said city." On the 17th of October 
was opened at Arras a congress between the plenipotentiaries of 
England and those of Burgundy. On the 20th of November a 
special truce was granted to the Parisians, whilst Henry V., in 
concert with Duke Philip of Burgundy, was prosecuting the war 
against the dauphin. On the 2nd of December the bases were laid 
of an agreement between the English and the Burgundians. 
The preliminaries of the treat}'' which was drawn up in accor- 
dance with these bases were signed on the 9th of April, 1420, 
by King Charles YI., and on the 20th communicated at Paris 
by the chancellor of France to the parliament and to all the 
religious and civil, royal and municipal authorities of the capital. 
After this communication, the chancellor and the premier pre- 
sident of parliament went with these preliminaries to Henry V. 
at Pontoise, whence he set out with a division of his army for 
Troyes, where the treaty, definitive and complete, was at last 
signed and promulgated in the cathedral of Troyes, on the 21st of 
May, 1420. 

Of the twenty-eight articles in this treaty, five contained its 
essential points and fixed its character : — 1st. The king of France, 
Charles VI., gave his daughter Catherine in marriage to Henry V., 
king of England. 2nd. " Our son, King Henry, shall place no 
hindrance or trouble in the way of our holding and possessing as 
long as we live and as at the present time the crown, the kingly 
dignity of France and all the revenues, proceeds, and profits which 
aje attached thereto for the maintenance of our state and tLe 



Peace of Troyes. 1 83 

charges of the kingdom. 3rd. It is agreed that immediately after 
our death, aud from that time forward, the crown and kingdom of 
France, with all their rights and appurtenances, shall belong 
perpetually, and shall he continued to our son King Henry and his 
heirs. 4tli. Whereas we are, at most times, prevented from advising 
by ourselves and from taking part in the disposal of the affairs of our 
kingdom, the power and the practice of governing and ordering 
the commonweal shall belong and shall be continued, during our ^^^ chief 
life, to our son King Henry, with the counsel of the nobles *'°" °'^*' 
and sages of the kingdom who shall obey us, and shall desire 
the honour and advantage of the said kingdom. 5th. Our son 
King lienry shall strive with all his might, and as soon as pos- 
sible, to bring back to their obedience to us, all and each of 
the towns, cities, castles, places, districts, and persons in our 
kingdom that belong to the party commonly called of the dauphin 
or Armagnac." 

This substitution, in the near future, of an English for the French 
kingship ; this relinquishment, in the present, of the government 
of France to the hands of an English prince nominated to become 
before long her king ; this authority given to the English prince to 
prosecute in Fiunce, against the dauphin of France, a civil war ; this 
complete abdication of all the rights and. duties of the kingship, of 
paternity and of national independence ; and, to sum up all in one 
word, this anti-French state-stroke accomplished by a king of 
France, with the co-operation of him who was the greatest amongst 
French lords, to the advantage of a foreign sovereign — there was 
surely in this enough to excite the most ardent and most legitimate 

national feelings. The revulsion against the treaty of Troyes 

. J J jjg results, 

was real and serious, even hi the very heart of the party attached 

to the duke of Burgundy. A popular poet of the time, Alan 

Chartier, constituted himself censor of the moral corruption, 

and interpreter of the patriotic paroxysms caused by the cold 

and harsb supremacy of this unbending foreigner, who set 

himself up for the king of France and had. not one feeling in 

sympathy with the French. Alan Chartier's Quadriloge invectif is AlanChar^ 

a lively and sometimes eloquent allegory in which France personi- tier's 

lied implores her three children, the clergy, the chivalry, and the logs." 

people, to forget their own quarrels and unite to save their mother 

whilst saving themselves ; and this political pamphlet getting 

spread about amongst the provinces did good service to the 

national cause against the foreign conqueror. An event more 

powerful than any human eloquence occurred to give the dauphin 

and his partisans earlier hopes. Towards the end of August, 1422, 



I S4 History of France* 

A D 1432. Henry Y. foil ill j and, too stout-hearted to delude himself as to 
Death of }jig condition, he thought no longer of any thing but preparing 
f'f England ^■'in)self for death. He expired at Vincennes on the 31st of Augnst, 
(Aug. 31). 1422, at the age of thirty-four. A great soul and a great king ; hufc 
a great example also of the boundless errors which may be fallen 
into by the greatest men when they pursue with arrogant con- 
fidence their own Yiews, forgetting the laws of justice and the 
rights of other men. 
Death of On the 22nd of October, 1422, less than two months after the 
of France * ^^^ath of Henry V., Charles YL, king of France, died at Paris in the 
(Oct. 22). forty-third year of his reign. As soon as he had been buried at 
St. Denis, the duke of Bedford, regent of France according to the 
will of Henry Y., caused a herald to proclaim, " Long live Henry 
of Lancaster, king of England and of France ! " The people's 
voice made very different proclamation. It had always been said 
that the public evils proceeded from the state of illness into which 
the unhappy King Charles had fallen. The goodness he had 
given glimpses of in his lucid intervals had made him an object of 
tender pity. Some weeks yet before his death, when he had 
entered Paris again, the inhabitants, in the midst of their sufferings 
and under the harsh government of the English, had seen with joy 
tt ^ ^if' ^^^^^' P"*^^ ™^^ king coming back amongst them, and had greeted 
his sub- him with thousand-fold shouts of " ]N"oel ! " His body lay in state 
jects. fQp three days, with the face uncovered, in a hall of the hostel of 
St. Paul, and the multitude went thither to pray for him, saying, 
" Ah ! dear prince, never shall we have any so good as thou wert ; 
never shall we see thee more. Accursed be thy death ! Since 
thou dost leave us, we shall never have aught but wars and 
troubles. As for thee, thou goest to thy rest; as for us, we remain 
in tribulation and sorrow. We seem made to fall into the same 
distress as the children of Israel during the captivity in Babylon." 
The people's instinct was at the same time right and wrong. 
France had yet many evil days to go through and cruel trials to 
endure ; she was, however, to be saved at last ; Charles YI. was to 
be followed by Charles Yll. and Joan of Arc. 

It was only when he knew that, on the 27th of October, the par- 
liament of Paris had, not without some little hesitation and am- 
biguity, recognized " as king of England and of France, Henry YI., 
son of Henry Y. lately deceased," that the dauphin Charles assumed 
on the 30th of October, in his castle of Mehun-sur-Yevre, the 
title of king, and repaired to Bourges to inaugurate in the cathedral 
of that city his reign as Charles VII. 

At a time when not only the crown of the kingdom but the 



Charles VII., King. 185 

existence and independence of tlie nation were at stake, the new 
king had not given any signs of being strongly moved by patriotic 
feelings, " He was, in person, a handsome prince, and handsome in CharlesVII. 
speech with all persons and compassionate towards poor folks," says 
his contemporary Monstrelet ; *' but he did not readily put on his 
harness, and he had no heart for war if he could do without it." 
Oa ascending the throne, this young prince, so little of the politi- 
cian and so little of the knight, encountered at the head of his 
enemies the most able amongst the politicians and warriors of the 
day in the duke of Bedford, whom his brother Henry V. had 
appointed regent of France and had charged to defend on behalf 
of his nephew, Henry VI., a child in the cradle, the crown of 
France already more than half won. Il^ever did struggle appear 
more unequal, or native king more inferior to foreign pretender. 

Sagacious observers, however, would have easily discerned in the 
cause which appeared the stronger and the better supported many 
seeds of weakness and danger. When Philip the Good, duke of 
Eurgundy, heard at Arras, that Charles VI. was dead, it occurred to 
him immediately that if he attended the obsequies of the English 
king of France he would be obliged, French prince as he was, and 
cousin-german of Charles VI., to yield precedence to John, duke of 
Bedford, regent of France and uncle of the new king Henry VI, 

He resolved to hold aloof, and contented himself with sending to 

.AD 1423 
Paris chamberlains to make his excuses and supply his place with __^24 

the regent. The war, though still carried on with great spirit. The war 

could not and in fact did not bring about any decisive result from Battles^of 

1422 to 1429. Towns were alternately taken, lost, and retaken, at Crevant 

one time by the French, at another by the English or Burgundians ; ^ -i 

petty encounters and even important engagements took place with 

vicissitudes of success and reverses on both sides. At Crevant-sur- 

Yonne, on the 31st of July, 1423, and at Verneuil, in l!^ormandy, 

on the 17th of August, 1424, the French were beaten, and their 

faithful allies, the Scots, suffered considerable loss. In the latter 

affair, however, several Norman lords deserted the English flag, 

refusing to fight against the king of France. In order to put an 

end to this doubtful condition of events and of minds, the duke of 

Bedford determined to aim a grand blow at the national party in 

France and at her king. After Paris and Eouen, Orleans was the 

most important city in the kingdom ; it was as supreme on the 

banks of the Loire as Paris and Rouen were on those of the Seine, 

After having obtained from England considerable reinforcements, ^ d 1428. 

commanded by leaders of experience, the English commenced, in Siege of 

October, 1428, the siege of Orleans. The approaches to the place °*'^^* 



1 86 History of France. 

were occupied in force, and bastilles closely connected one with 

another were constructed around the walls. As a set off, the most 

valiant warriors of France, La Hire, Dunois, Xaintrailles, and the 

marshal La Fayette threw themselves into Orleans, the garrison of 

which amounted to scarcely twelve hundred men. Several towns, 

Bourges, Poitiers, and La Eochelle sent thither money, munitions, 

^mi! J; and militia.; the states-geueral, assembled at Chinon, voted an 
"The Her- . . 

rirg af- extraordinary aid ; and Charles VII. called out the regulars and the 

fair." reserves. Assaults on the one side and sorties on the other were 
begun with ardour. Besiegers and besieged quite felt that they 
were engaged in a decisive struggle. The first encounter was unfor- 
tunate for the Orleannese. In a fight called the herring affair, they 
were unsuccessful in an attempt to carry off a supply of victuals and 
salt fish which Sir John Falstolf was bringing to the besiegers. 

This very year, on the 6th of January, 1428, at Domremy, a 
little village in the valley of the Meuse, between Xeufchateau and 
Vaucouleurs, on the edge of the frontier from Champagne to Lor- 
raine, the young daughter of simple tillers-of-the-soil " of good life 
and repute, herself a good, simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied 
Joan of Arc. hitherto in sewing or spinning with her mother or driving afield her 
parent's sheep and sometimes even, when her father's turn came 
round, keeping for him the whole flock of the commune," was fulfil- 
ling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc, whom all her neigh- 
bours called Joannette. Her early childhood was passed amidst the 
pursuits characteristic of a country life ; her behaviour was irre- 
proachable, and she was robust, active, and intrepid. Her imagina- 
tion becoming inflamed by the distressed situation of France, she 
dreamed that she had interviews with St. Margaret, St. Catherine, 
and St. Michael, who commanded her, in the name of God, to go 
and raise the siege of Orleans, and conduct Charles to be crowned 
at Eheims. Accordingly she applied to Eobert de Baudricourt, 
captain of the neighbouring town of Vaucouleurs, revealing to him 
her inspiration, and conjuring him not to negltct the voice of God, 

Her inter- ^yrfiich spoke through her. This officer for some time treated her 

view with ^ ° , 

the king, with neglect ; but at length, prevailed on by repeated importu- 
nities, he sent her to the king at Chinon, to whom, when 
introduced, she said : " Gentle dauphin, my name is Joan the Maid, 
the King of heaven hath sent me to your assistance ; if you please 
to give me troops, by the grace of God and the force of arms, I will 
raise the siege of Orleans, and conduct you to be crowned at Eheims, 
in spite of your enemies." Her requests were now granted : she 
was armed cap-a-jJie, mounted on horseback, and provided witii a 
suitable retinue. Previous to her attempting any exploit, she wrote 



jfoan of Arc relieves Orleans. 1 8/ 

a long letter to the young English monarch, commanding him to 
withdraw his forces from France, and threatening his destruction iji 
case of refusal. She concluded with " hear this advice from God 
and la Fucelle." 

But, side by side with these friends, she had an adversary in the ^fr ene- 
king's favourite, George de la Tremoille, an ambitious courtier, 
jealous of any one who seemed within the range of the king's good 
graces, and opposed to a vigorous prosecution of the war, since it ham- 
pered him in the policy he wished to keep up towards the duke of Bur- 
gundy. To the ill-will of La Tremoille was added that of the 
majority of courtiers enlisted in the following of the powerful 
favourite, and that of warriors irritated at the importance acquired 
at their expense by a rustic and fantastic little adventuress. Here 
was the source of the enmities and intrigues which stood in the 
way of all Joan's demands, rendered her successes more tardy, 
difficult, and incomplete, and were one day to cost her more dearly 
still. 

At the end of about five weeks the expedition was in readiness. 
It was a heavy convoy of revictualment protected by a body of 
ten or twelve thousand men commanded by marshal de Boussac, and 
numbering amongst them XaintraUles and La Hire. The march A.D. 1429. 
began on the 27th of April, 1429. Joan had caused the removal to reUeve' 
of all women of bad character, and had recommended her comrades Orleans, 
to confess. She took the Communion in the open air, before their 
eyes ; and a company of priests, headed by her chaplain, Pasquerel, 
led the way whilst chanting sacred hymns. Great was the surprise 
amongst the men-at-arms. Many had words of mockery on their 
lips. It was the time when La Hire used to say, " If God were a 
soldier, He would turn robber." ^Nevertheless, respect got the better 
of habit ; the most honourable were really touched ; the coarsest 
considered themselves bound to show restraint. On the 29th of 
April they arrived before Orleans. But, in consequence of the road 
tliey had followed, the Loire was between the army and the town ; 
the expeditionary corps had to be split in two ; the troops were 
obliged to go and feel for the bridge of Blois in order to cross the 
river ; and Joan was vexed and surprised. Dunois, arrived Itoui 
Orleans in a little boat, urged her to enter the town that same even- 
ing. " Are you the bastard ol Orleans 1 " asked she, when he accosted 
her. "Yes; and I am rejoiced at your coming." "Was it you 
who gave counsel for making me come hither by this side of the 
river and not the direct way, over yonder where Talbot and the 
English were?" "Yes; such was the opinion of the wisest cap- 
tains." 



I88 



History of France, 



Enters 

Orleans 

(April 29). 



Marches 
towards 
Elieims. 



Coronation 
of the king 
(July 16). 



Joan's first undertaking was against Orleans, wliich she entered 
■without opposition on tbe 29th of April, 1429, on horsehack, com- 
pletely armed, preceded by her own banner, and having beside her 
Dunois, and behind her the captains of the garrison and several of 
the most distinguished burgesses of Orleans, who had gone out to 
meet her. The population, one and all, rushed thronging round her, 
carrying torches, and greeting her arrival " with joy as great as if 
they had seen God come down amongst them." With admirable 
good sense, discovering the superior merits of Dunois, the bastard 
of Orleans, a celebrated captain, she wisely adhered to his instruc- 
tions : and by constantly harassing the English, and beating up 
their intrenchments in various desperate attacks, in all of which she 
displayed the most heroic courage, Joan in a few weeks compelled 
the earl of Suffolk and his army to raise the siege, having sustained 
the loss of six thousand men. The proposal of crowning Charles at 
Eheims would formerly have appeared like madness, but the Maid 
of Orleans now insisted on its fulfilment. She accordingly recom- 
menced the campaign on the 10th of June ; to complete the deliver- 
ance of Orleans an attack was begun upon the neighbouring places, 
Jargeaa, Meung, and Beaugency \ thousands of the late dispirited 
subjects of Charles now flocked to his standard, many towns imme- 
diately declared for him ; and the English, who had suffered in 
various actions, at that of Jargeau, when the earl of Suffolk was 
taken prisoner, and at that of Patay, when Sir John Fastolfe fled 
without striking a blow, seemed now to be totally dispirited. On 
the 16th of July King Charles entered Rheims, and the ceremony 
of his coronation was fixed for the morrow. 

It was solemn and emotional as are all old national traditions 
which recur after a forced suspension. Joan rode between Dunois 
and the archbishop of Eheims, chancellor of France. The air 
resounded with the Te Deum sung with all their hearts by clergy 
and crowd. " In God's name," said Joan to Danois, " here is a good 
people and a devout ; when I die, I should much like it to be in 
these parts." " Joan," inquired Dunois, " know you when you will 
die and in what place ? " "I know not," said she, " for I am at the 
will of God." Then she added, "I have accomplished that which 
my Lord commanded me, to raise the siege of Orleans and have the 
gentle king crowned. I would like it well if it should please Him 
to send me back to my father and mother, to keep their sheep and 
their cattle and do that which was my wont." " When the said 
lords," says the chronicler, an eye-witness, " heard these words of 
Joan, who, with eyes towards heaven, gave thanks to God, they the 
more believed that it was somewhat sent from God and not other- 



Siege of Compi}gne. 1 89 

Historians and even contemporaries have given mucli discussion 
to the question whether Joan of Arc, according to her first ideas, 
had really limited her design to the raising of the siege of Orleans 
and the coronation of Charles VI I. at Rheims. However that may 
be, when Orleans was relieved and Charles VII. crowned, the situa- 
tion, posture, and part of Joan underwent a change. She no longer 
manifested the same confidence in herself and her designs. She 
no longer exercised over those in whose midst she lived the 
same authority. She continued to carry on war, but at hap-hazard, 
sometimes with and sometimes without success, just like La Hire 
and Dunois ; never discouraged, never satisfied, and never looking 
upon herself as triumphant. After the coronation, her advice was 
to march at once upon Paris, in order to take up a fixed position in it, 
as being the political centre of the realm of which Eheims was the 
religious. iN'othing of the sort was done. She threw herself into 
Compiegne, then besieged by the duke of Burgundy. The next day 
(May 25th, 1430), heading a sally upon the enemy, she was repulsed qq^^^--" 
and compelled to retreat after exerting the utmost valour; when, Joan of Arc 
having nearly reached the gate of the town, an English archer pur- taken 
sued her, and pulled her from her horse. The joy of the English at 
this capture was as great as if they had obtained a complete victory. 
Joan was committed to ^he care of John of Luxembourg, count of 
Ligny, from whom the duke of Bedford purchased the captive fop 
ten thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred pounds a 
year to the bastard of Vendome, to whom she surrendered. Joan 

was now conducted to Eouen, where, loaded with irons, she j'^^.*'j°' 

' ' ' ducted 10 

was thrown into a dungeon, preparatory to appear before a court Eouen. 

assembled to judge her. 

The trial lasted from the 21st of February to the 30th of May, a.D. 1431. 
1431. The court held forty sittings, mostly in the chapel of the Her Uual, 
castle, some in Joan's very prison. On her arrival there, she had 
been put in an iron cage; afterwards she was kept "no longer in 
the cage, but in a dark room in a tower of the castle, wearing irons 
upon her feet, fastened by a chain to a large piece of wood, and 
guarded night and day by four or five soldiers of low grade." She 
complained of being thus chained ; but the bishop told her that her 
former attempts at escape demanded this precaution. " It is true,'* 
said Joan, as truthful as heroic, " I did wish and I still wish to 
escape from prison, as is the right of every prisoner." At her exami- 
nation, the bishop required her to take " an oath to tell the truth 
about every thing as to which she should be questioned." "I 
know not what you mean to question me about ; perchance you 
may ask me things I would not tell you ; touching my revelations, 



IQO History of France. 

for instance, you might ask me to tell something I have sworn not 

to tell \ thus I should be perjured, ■which you ought not to desire." 

The bishop insisted upon an oath absolute and without condition. 

"You are too hard on me," said Joan; "I do not like to take an 

„«,.^«,- t-^ oath to tell the truth save as to matters which concern the faith." 
RTiswers to 

tiio judges, The bishop called upon her to swear on pain of being held guilty of 
the things imputed to her. " Go on to something else," said 
she. And this was the answer she made to all questions which 
seemed to her to be a violation of her right to be silent. Wearied 
and hurt at these imperious demands, she one day said, " I come on 
God's business, and I have naught to do here ; send me back to 
God from Avhora I come." " Are you sure you are in God's grace?" 
ftsked the bishop. "If I be not," answered Joan, "please God to 
bring me to it; and if I be, please God to keep me in it !" The 
bishop himself remained dumbfounded. 

There is no object in following through all its sittings and all its 
twistings this odious and shameful trial, in which the judges' 
prejudiced servility and scientific subtlety were employed for three 
months to wear out the courage or overreach the understanding of 
a young girl of nineteen, who refused at one time to lie, and at 

and death, another to enter into discussion with them, and made no defence 
beyond holding her tongue or appealing,to God who had spoken 
to her and dictated to her that which she had done. In the end 
she was condemned for all the crimes of which she had been 
accused, aggravated by that of heresy, and sentenced to perpetual 
imprisonment, to be fed during life on bread and water. The 
English were enraged that she was not condemned to death. 
" Wait but a little," said one of the judges, "we shall soon find the 
means to ensnare her." And this was effected by a grievous 
accusation, which, though somewhat countenanced by the Levitical 
law, has been seldom urged in modern times, the wearing of man's 
attire. Joan had been charged with this offence, but she promised 
not to repeat it. A suit of man's apparel was designedly placed in 
her chamber, and her own garments, as some authors say, being 
removed, she clothed herself in the forbidden garb, and her 
keepers surprising her in that dress, she was adjudged to death as 
a relapsed heretic, and was condemned to be burnt in the market- 
place at Rouen. (1431). 

Four centuries have rolled by since Joan of Arc, that modest and 
heroic servant of God, made a sacrifice of herself for France. For 
four and twenty years after her death, France and the king appeared 
to think no more of her. However, in 1455, remorse came upon 
Charles VII, and upon France. Nearly all the provinces, all the 



Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc. I9I 

towns were freed from the foreigner ; and shame ^A'as felt that 
nothing was saiJ, nothing done for the young girl who had saved 
every thing. At Eouen, especially, where the sacrifice was 
completed, a cry for reparation arose. It was timidly demanded Herreha-* 
from the spiritual power which had sentenced and delivered over bilitatioa 
Joan as a heretic to the stake. Pope Calixtus III. entertained the ' ^ *' 
request preferred not by the king of France but in the name of 
Isabel Romee, Joan's mother, and her whole family. Regular 
proceedings were commenced and lollovved up for the rehabilitation 
of the martyr; and, on the 7th of July, 1456, a decree of the court 
assembled at Rouen quashed the sentence of 1431, together with 
all its consequences, and ordered " a general procession and solemn 
sermon at St. Ouen Place and the Vieux-Marche, where the said 
maid had been cruelly and horribly burned \ besides the planting 
of a cross of honour {crucis honestce) on the Vieux-Marche, the 
judges reserving the official notice to be given of their decision 
throughout the cities and notable places of the realm." 

After the execution of Joan the war resumed its course, though 
without any great events. By way of a step towards solution, the 
duke of Bedford, in November, 1431, escorted to Paris King 
Henry VI., scarcely ten years old, and had him crowned at K'otre- 
Dame. The ceremony was distinguished for pomp but not for 
warmth. The duke of Burgundy was not present ; it was an 
Englishman, the cardinal-bishop of Winchester, who anointed the 
young Englander king of France. 

Peace, however, was more and more the general desire. Scarcely Attempts 
had one attempt at pacification failed when another was begun, ^■tpacifica- 
The constable De Richemont's return to power led to fresh 
overtures. He was a statesman as well as a warrior; and his 
inclinations were known at Dijon and London as well as at Chinon. 
The advisers of King Henry VI. proposed to open a conference, ou 
the 15th of October, 1433, at Calais. The capture of several town;? 
by the generals of Charles VII. contributed much to restore universal 
confidence to the French, and in the year 1435 the treaty of Arras, 
concluded between the king and the duke of Burgundy, led, if not 
to the active support, at least to the neutrality of a lord who had 
been one of the most dangerous enemies of the crown of France. 
The conditions imposed by this treaty were certainly of ^ rather 
humiliating character, but the immediate result more than com- 
pensated for them; Paris opened its gates on May 29th, 1436, and 
the English troops who had shut themselves up in the Bastille, 
offered to give up that fortress on condition that they might be 
allowed to retire with all their property, and accompanied by those 



192 History of France. 

who would like to folloAV them. These terms heing accepted, they 
left Paris by the gate Saint Antoine, marched round the walls and 
embarked on the Seine for the purpose of returning to Eouen. 
The constable de Eichemont's easy occupation of the capital led the 
majority of the small places in the neighbourhood, St. Denis, 
Chevreuse, Marcoussis, and Montlhery to decide either upon 
spontaneous surrender, or allowing tliemselves to be taken after no 
Cliange in great resistance. Charles VII., on his way through France to 
e mg s Lyon, in Dauphiny, Languedoc, Auvergne, and along the Loire, 
recovered several other towns,- for instance, Chateau-Landon, 
jSTemours, and Charny. He laid siege in person to Montereau, an 
important military post with which a recent and sinister remi- 
niscence was connected. K great change now made itself apparent 
in the king's behaviour and disposition. He showed activity and 
vigilance, and was ready to expose himself without any care for 
fatigue or danger. On the day of the assault (10th of October, 

A.D. 1437. 1437) \q went down into the trenches, remained there in water up 

He re-en- ' . , . 

ters Palis, to his waist, mounted the scaling-ladder sword in hand, and was 

one of the first assailants who penetrated over the top of the walls 

right into the place. After the surrender of the castle as well as 

the town of Montereau, he marched on Paris, and made his solemn 

re-entry there on the 12th of I^ovember, 1437, for the lirst time 

since in 1418 Tanneguy-Duchatel had carried him away, whilst 

still a child, wrapped in his bed-clothes. Charles was received and 

entertained as became a recovered and a victorious king ; but he 

passed only three weeks there, and went away once more, on the 

3rd of December, to go and resume at Orleans first and then at 

Bourges, the serious cares of government. It is said to have been 

Agnes ^^ ^l^^g royal entry into Paris that Agnes Sorel or Soreau, who was 
soon to have the name of Queen of Beauty, and to assume in French 
history an almost glorious though illegitimate position, appeared 
with brilliancy in the train of the queen, Mary of Anjou, to whom 
the king had appointed her a maid of honour. 

The war There was a continuance of war to the north of the Loire ; 

con inue . ^^^ amidst many alternations of successes and reverses the 
national cause made great way there. Charles resolved, in 1442, 
to undertake an expedition to the south of the Loire, in Aquitaine, 
where the English were still donjinant ; and he was successful. He 
took from the English Tartas, Saint-Sever, Marmande, La Reole, 
Blaye, and Bourg-sur-Mer. Their ally, Count John d'Armagnac, 
submitted to the king of France. These successes cost Charles YIL 
the brave La Hire, who died at Moiitauban of his wounds. On 
returning to Normandy, where ho had left Dunois, Charles, in 



7 ruce of Tours. — Battle of Formigny. 193 

1443, conducted a prosperous campaign there. The English 
leaders were getting -weary of a war without any definite issue; 
and they had proposals made to Charles for a truce, accompanied 
with a demand on the part of their young king, Henry VI., for the 
hand of a French princess, Margaret of Anjou, daughter of King 
Eene, who wore the three crowns of ]!^aples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, 
without possessing any one of the kingdoms. The triice and the 
marriage were concluded at Tours, in 1444. IsTeither of the xruce of 
arrangements was popular in England ; the English people, who Tours, 
had only a far-off touch of suffering from the war, considered that 
their government made too many concessions to France. In 
France, too, there was some murmuring; the king, it was said, 
did not press his advantages with sufficient vigour ; every body not popu- 
was in a hurry to see all Aquitaine reconquered. Charles YII. ^^' 
and his advisers employed the leisure afforded by the truce in pre- 
paring for a renewal of the struggle. They were the first to begin a.D. 1449. 
it again ; and from 1449 to 1451 it was pursued by the French king Hostilities 
and nation with ever increasing ardour, and with obstinate courage '^^'^°^^ • 
by the veteran English warriors, astounded at no longer being vic- 
torious. Normandy and Aquitaine, which was beginning to be 
called Guyenne only, were throughout this period the constant and 
the chief theatre of war. Amongst the great number of fights and 
incidents which distinguished the three campaigns in those two 
provinces the recapture of Eouen by Dunois in October, 1449, the 
battle of Formigny, won near Bayeux on the 15 th of April, 1450, 
by the constable De Eichemont, and the twofold capitulation of 
Bordeaux, first on the 28th of June, 1451, and next on the 9th of 
October, 1453, in order to submit to Charles YIL, are the only 
events to which a place in history is due, for those were the days 
on which the question was solved touching the independence of 
the nation and the- kingship in France. The battle of Formigny . _ ...^ 
lasted nearly three hours ; the English were forced to fly at three Battle of 
points, and lost 3700 men ; several of their leaders were made Formigny 
prisoners ; those who were left retired in good order ; Bayeux, 
Avranches, Caen, Falaise, and Cherbourg fell one after the other 
into the hands of Charles VII. ; and by the end of August, 
1450, the whole of Normandy had been completely won back by 
France. 

The conquest of Guyenne, which was undertaken immediately 
after that of Normandy, was at the outset more easy and more 
speedy. Amongst the lords of southern France several hearty 
patriots, such as John of Blois, count of Perigord, and Arnold 
Amanieu, sire d'Albret, of their own accord began the strife, and on 





194 History of France. 

the 1st of l^Tovem'ber, 1450, inflicted a somewhat severe reverse upon 

the English, near Blanquefort, In the spring of the following 

year Charles VII. authorized the count of Armagnac to take the 

A D 1451 fi^l*i> ^^^ sent Dunois to assume the command-in- chief An army 

Campaign of twenty thousand men mustered under his orders ; and, in the 

mGuyenne gQ^j^gg of May, 1451, some of the principal places of Guyenne, such 

as St. Emilion, Blaye, Fronsac, Bourg-en-Mer, Lihourne, and 

Dax were taken hy assault or capitulated. Bordeaux and Bayonne 

held out for some weeks; but, on the 12th of June, a treaty 

concluded between the Bordelese and Dunois secured to the three 

estates of the district the liberties and privileges which they had 

enjoyed under English supremacy ; and it was further stipulated 

that, if by the 24th of June the city had not been succoured 

hy English forces, the estates of Guyenne should recognize the 

sovereignty of King Charles. When the 24th of June came, a 

herald went up to one of the towers of the ca^le and shouted, 

" Succour from the king of England for them of Bordeaux ! " 

None replied to this appeal; so Bordeaux surrendered, and on 

the 29th of June Dunois took possession of it in the name of the 

king of France. The siege of Bayonne, which was begun on the 

6th of August, came to an end on the 20th by means of a similar 

treaty. Guyenne was thus completely won. But the English still 

had a considerable following there. They had held it for three 

centuries ; and they had always treated it well in respect of local 

liberties, agriculture, and commerce. Charles VII., on recovering 

it, was less wise. He determined to establish there forthwith the 

Insurreo' taxes, the laws, and the whole regimen of northern France ; and 

tion at the Bordelese were as prompt in protesting against these measures 
SordfiSiiix. J. i J. »-' 

as the king was in employing them. In August, 1452, a deputation 

from the three estates of the province waited upon Charles at 

Bourges, but did not obtain their demands. On their return to 

Bordeaux an insurrection was organized ; and Peter de Mont- 

ferrand, sire de Lesparre, repaired to London and proposed to the 

English government to resume possession of Guyenne. On the 

22nd of October, 1452, Talbot appeared before Bordeaux with a 

body of five thousand men ; the inhabitants opened their gates to 

him ; and he installed himself there as lieutenant of the king of 

England, Henry VI. ^Nearly all the places in the neighbourhood, 

with the exception of Bourg and Blaye, returned beneath the sway 

of the English ; considerable reinforcements were sent to Talbot 

from England ; and at the same time an English fleet threatened 

the coasts of IN"ormandy. But Charles VII. was no longer the 

blind and indolent king he had been in his youth. Nor can 



End of tJie Hundred Years' War. 195 

tKe prompt and effectual energy lie displayed in 1453 be any 
longer attributed to the ipfluence of Agnes Sorel, for she died on 
the 9th of February, 1450, Charles left Eichemont and Dunois to 
hold liformandy ; and, in the early days of spring, moved in person 
to the south of France with a strong army and the principal Gascon 
lords "who two years previously had brought Guyenne back under 
his power. On the 2nd of June, 1453, he opened the campaign at 
St. Jean d'Angely. Several places surrendered to him as soon as 
he appeared before their walls; and on the 13th of July he laid A-D. 1453. 
siege to Castillon, on the Dordogne, which had shortly before ca^stillon 
fallen into the hands of the English. The Bordelese grew alarmed Death of 
and urged Talbot to oppose the advance of the French. " We may ^^^°°*' 
very well let them come nearer yet," said the old warrior, then 
eighty years of age ; " rest assured that, if it please God, I will 
ftdfil my promise when I see that the time and the hour have come." 
On the night between the 16th and the 17th of July, Talbot set 
out with his troops to raise the siege of Castillon ; the result, 
however, was unfavourable to the English, and their brave com- 
mander met his death on the field of battle. Castillon surren- 
dered ; and at unequal intervals Libourne, St. Emilion, Chateaii- 
l^euf de Medoc, Blanquefort, St. Macaire, Cadillac, &c., followed 
the example. At the commencement of October, 1453, Bordeaux 
alone was still holding out. The promoters of the insurrection Tating of 
which had been concerted with the English, amongst other sires Bordeaux 
de Duras and de Lesparre, protracted the resistance rather in their ^ ' '' 
own self-defence than in response to the wishes of the population ; 
the king's artillery threatened the place by land, and by sea a 
king's fleet from Eochelle and the ports of Brittany blockaded the 
Gironde. ** The majority of the king's officers." says the contem- 
porary historian, Thomas Basin, " advised him to punish by at 
least the destruction of their walls the Bordelese who had recalled 
the English to their city ; but Charles, more merciful and more 
soft-hearted, refused." He confined himself to withdrawing from 
Bordeaux her municipal privileges, which, however, she soon par- 
tially recovered, and to imposing upon her a fine of a hundred 
thousand gold crowns, afterwards reduced to thirty thousand ; 
he caused to be built at the expense of the city two fortresses, the 
fort of the Ha and the castle of Trompette, to keep in check so 
bold and fickle a population ; and an amnesty was proclaimed for 
all but twenty specified persons, who were banished. On these 
conditions the capitulation was concluded and signed on the 17th End of the 
of October ; the English re- embarked ; and Charles, without ^"' 
entering Bordeaux, returned to Touraine. The English had no 

o 2 



iq6 



History of France. 



Consta'ble 

de Eiche- 

mont. 



Jacques 
Coeur, his 
character. 



longer any possession in France but Calais and Guines ; the Hun- 
dred Years' War was OTer. 

And to whom was the glory due? 

Charles VII. himself decided the question. When in 1455, 
twenty-four years after the death of Joan of Arc, he at Eome and 
at Rouen prosecuted her claims for restoration of character and did 
for her fame and her memory all that was still possible, he was but 
relieving his conscience from a load of ingratitude and remorse which 
in general weighs but lightly upon men and especially upon kings ; 
La FuceJle, first amongst all, had a right to the glory, for she had 
been the first to contribute to the success. 

Next to Joan of Arc, the constable De Richeraont was the most 
effective and the most glorious amongst the liberators of France 
and of the king. He was a strict and stern warrior, unscrupulous 
and pitiless towards his enemies, especially towards such as he 
despised, severe in regard to himself, dignified in his manners, never 
guilty of swearing himself, and punishing swearing as a breach of 
discipline amongst the troops placed under his orders. Like a true 
patriot and royalist, he had more at heart his duty towards France 
and the king than he had his own personal interests. Dunois, 
La Hire, Xaintrailles, and marshals De Boussac and De La Fayette 
were, under Charles VII., brilliant warriors and useful servants of 
the king and of France ; but, in spite of their knightly renown, it 
is questionable if they can be reckoned, like the constable De 
Richemont, amongst the liberators of national independence. There 
are degrees of glory, and it is the duty of history not to distribute 
it too readily and as it were by handfuls. 

Besides all these warriors, we meet, under the sway of Charles VII., 
at first in a humble capacity and afterwards at his court, in his 
diplomatic service and sometimes in his closest confidence, a man of 
quite a diS'erent origin and quite another profession, but one who 
nevertheless acquired bypeaceful toil great riches and great influence ; 
we mean Jacques Coeur, born at Bourges at the close of the fourteenth 
century. This eminent man, after acquiring a large fortune by commer- 
cial transactions, rose to the post of argeniier, or administrator of the 
royal exchequer. In this quality he was for twelve years associated 
with the most important government transactions, and he adminis- 
tered the finances with the greatest probity and uprightness. The 
war was becoming daily more onerous ; Jacques Cceur always knew 
how to provide the necessary means, and when the royal exchequer 
was empty, he supplied the deficiency out of his own private means. 
Thus it was that he lent to Charles VII. the 200,000 gulden crowns 
(24,000^000 francs) necessary for theconquest of i^ormandy. "Sir, 




JACQUES CCEUR 



Character of Charles VII. and of his government. 197 

what I have is yours," said he to the king. The courtiers took him 
at his word, and after an infamous lawsuit which they instituted 
against him, 'they divided, his spoils hetween them, and caused him 
to he shut up in a convent at Beaucaire. His former clerks, how- 
ever, combined to set him free, and conducted him to Eome, where 
the Pope received him in the most honourable manner (1455). 
He died the following year at Ohio, of a wound received in the 
course of a battle with the Turks. Another financial, Jean de A._D. 1456. 
Xaincoings, as innocent as Jacques Coeur, was likewise condemned ^^ ^^ 
to prison and all his property confiscated " pour avoir pris grandca 
et excessives sommes des deniers du Eoi." 

We have now reached the end of events under this long reign ; 
aU that remains is to run over the substantial results of Charles 
VII.'s government, and the melancholy imbroglios of his lat- 
ter years with his son, the turbulent, tricky, and wickedly able 
born conspirator who was to succeed him under the name of 
Louis XI. 

One fact is at the outset to be remarked upon ; it at the first blush Nature of 
appears singular, but it admits of easy explanation. In the first t^e govern- 
nineteen years of his reign, from 1423 to 1442, Charles VII. very ctiarlesVII 
frequently convoked the states-general, at one time of northern 
France or Langue d'oil, at another of southern France or Langue- 
d'oc. Twenty-four such assemblies took place during this period 
at Bourges, at Selles in Berry, at Le Puy in Velay, at Meun-sur- 
Yevre, at Chinon, at Sully-sur-Loire, at Tours, at Orleans, at Severs, 
at Carcassonne, and at diff'erent spots in Languedoc. It was the 
time of the great war between France on the one side and England 
and Burgundy alhed on the other, the time of intrigues incessantly 
recurring at court, and the time likewise of carelessness and indo- 
lence on the part of Charles YIL, more devoted to his pleasures than 
regardful of his government. He had incessant need of states- 
general to supply him with money and men, and support him 
through the difficulties of his position. But when, dating from the 
peace of Arras (September 21, 1435), Charles VII., having become 
reconciled with the duke of Burgundy, was delivered from civil war, 
and was at grips with none but England alone, already half beaten 
by the divine inspiration, the triumph, and the martyrdom of Joan 
of Arc, his posture and his behaviour underwent a rare transforma- 
tion. Without ceasing to be a coldly selfish and scandalously licen- 
tious king, he became a practical, hard-working, statesmanlike king, 
jealous and disposed to govern by himself, but at the same time 
watchful and skilful in availing himself of the able advisers who, 
whether it were bj a happy accident or by his own choice, were 



198 



History of France, 



Military 
reforms. 



Adminis* 

trative 

measures. 



grouped around him. By assiduous toil, in concert with his 
advisers, he was able to take in hand and accomplish, in the mili- 
tary, financial, and judicial system of the realm, those hold and at 
the same time prudent reforms which wrested the country from the 
state of disorder, pillage, and general insecurity to which it had been 
a prey, and commenced the era of that great monarchical adminis- 
tration which, in spite of many troubles and vicissitudes, was 
destined to be during more than three centuries the govern- 
ment of France. The constable De Eichemont and marshal De la 
Fayette were in respect of military matters Charles YII.'s principal 
advisers ; and it was by their counsel and with their co-operation 
that he substituted for feudal service and for the bands of wandering 
mercenaries {routie7's), mustered and maintained by hap-hazard, 
a permanent army, regularly levied, provided for, paid and com- 
manded, and charged with the duty of keeping order at home, and at 
the same time subserving abroad the interests and policy of the State. 
In connexion with and asanatural consequence of this military system 
Charles VII. on his own sole authority established certain permanent 
imposts with the object of making up any deficiency in the royal 
treasury whilst waiting for a vote of such taxes extraordinary as 
might be demanded of the states-general. Jacques Coeur, the two 
brothers Bureau, Martin Gouge, Michel Lailler, William Cousinot, 
and many other councillors, of burgher origin, laboured zealously 
to establish this administrative system, so prompt and freed from 
aU independent discussion. "Weary of wars, irregularities, and 
sufferings, France, in the fifteenth century, asked for nothing but 
peace and security ; and so soon as the kingship showed that it had 
an intention and was in a condition to provide her with them, the 
nation took little or no trouble about political guarantees which, as 
yet, it knew neither how to establish nor how to exercise ; its right 
to them was not disputed in principle, they were merely permitted 
to fall into desuetude; and Charles VII., who during the first half 
of his reign had twenty-four times assembled the states-general to 
ask them for taxes and soldiers, was able in the second to raise per- 
sonally both soldiers and taxes without drawing forth hardly any 
complaint. Charles VII. was a prince neither to be respected nor 
to be loved, and during many years his reign had not been a pros- 
perous one ; but "he re-quickened justice which had been a long 
while dead," says a chronicler devoted to the duke of Burgundy ; 
" he put an end to the tyrannies and exactions of the men-at-arms, 
and out of an infinity of murderers and robbers he formed men of 
resolution and honest life ; he made regular paths in murderous 
woods and forests, all roads safe, aU towns peaceful, aU nationalities 



The Church and tJie State. 199 

of his kingdom tranquil ; he chastised the evil and honoured the 
good, and he was sparing of human blood." 

Questions of military, financial, and judicial organization were 
not the only ones which occupied the government of Charles VII. j. ., 
He attacked also ecclesiastical questions which were at that period siastical 
a subject of passionate discussion in Christian Europe amongst the <luestiors. 
councils of the Church and in the closets of princes. The celebrated 
ordinance, known by the name of Pragmatic Sanction, which 
Charles VII. issued at Bourges on the 7th of July, 1438, with the 
concurrence of a grand national council, laic and ecclesiastical, was 
directed towards the carrying out, in the internal regulations of the 
French Church and in the relations either of the State with the 
Church in France, or of the Church of France with the papacy, of 
reforms long since desired or dreaded by the different powers and 
interests. It would be impossible to touch here upon these difficult 
and delicate questions without going far beyond the limits imposed 
upon the writer of this history. All that can be said is that there 
was no lack of a religious spirit or of a liberal spirit in the Prag- 
matic Sanction of Charles VII., and that the majority of the mea- 
sures contained in it were adopted with the approbation of the 
greater part of the French clergy as well as of educated laymen in 
France. 

In whatever light it is regarded, the government of Charles VIL 
in the latter part of his reign brought him not only in France but 
throughout Europe a great deal of fame and power. When he had 
driven the English out of his kingdom, he was called Charles the 
Victorious ; and when he had introduced into the internal regula- 
tions of the State so many important and effective reforms he was 
called Charles the Well-served. "The sense he had by nature," 
says his historian Chastellain, "had been increased to twice as 
much again, in his straitened fortunes, by long constraint and 
perilous dangers which sharpened his wits perforce." " He is the 
kuig of kings," was said of him by the doge of Venice, Francis 
Foscari, a good judge of policy ; " there is no doing without him." 

Nevertheless, at the close, so influential and so tranquil, of his 
reign, Charles VII. wa^s in his individual and private life the most 
desolate, the most harassed, and the most unhappy man in his 
kingdom. The dauphin Louis, after having from his very youth 
behaved in a factious, harebrained,* turbulent way towards the king Conduct 
his father, had become at one time an open rebel, at another a Dauphia. 
venomous conspirator and a dangerous enemy. At his birth, in 
1423, he had been named Louis in remembrance of his ancestor 
St. Louis and in hopes that he would resemble him. In 1440, at 



200 History of France. 

seventeen years of age, lie allied himself with tne great lords, who 
■were displeased with the new military system established by 
Charles VII., and allowed himself to be drawn by them into the 
The " Pra- transient rebellion known by the name of Praguery. T\Tien the 
guery." king, having put it down, refused to receive the rebels to favour, 
the dauphin said to his father, " My lord, I must go back with 
them, then ; for so I promised them." " Louis," replied the king, 
" the gates are open, and if they are not high enough I will have 
sixteen or twenty fathom of wall knocked down for you, that you 
may go whither it seems best to you." Charles YII. had made his 
son marry Margaret Stuart of Scotland, that charming princess who 
was so smitten with the language and literature of France, that 
coming one day upon the poet Alan Chart ier asleep upon a bench, 
she kissed him on the forehead in the presence of her mightily asto- 
nished train, for he was very ugly. The dauphin rendered his wife so 
wretched that she died in 1445, at the age of one and twenty, with 
these words upon her lips, " Oh ! fie on life ! Speak to me no more 
of it." In 1449, just when the king his father was taking up arms to 
drive the English out of ISTormandy, the dauphin Louis, who was 
now living entirely in Dauphiny, concluded at Brian9on a secret 
league with the duke of Savoy " against the ministers of the king 
of France, Ms enemies." In 1456, in order to escape from the 
perils brought upon him by the plots which he in the heart of 
Dauphiny was incessantly hatching against his father, Louis fled 
from Grenoble and went to take refuge in Brussels with the duke 
of Burgundy, Philip the Good, who willingly received him, at the 
.same time excusing himself to Charles VII. " on the ground of the 
respect he owed to the son of his suzerain," and putting at the 
disposal of Louis " his guest " a pension of thirty-six thousand 
livres. At Brussels the dauphin remained impassive, waiting with 
Ti'^'-h^^f^ scandalous indifference for the news of his father's death. Charles 
CharlesVII sank into a state of profound melancholy and general distrust. At 
(July 22). last, deserted by them of his own household and disgusted with bis 
own life, he died on the 22nd of July, 1461, 




CHAPTEE YI. 

LOUIS XI. — CHARLES VlII, — LOUIS XIL (1461-1515). 

" Gentlemen," said Dunois on rising from table at the funeral- A-'*; ^^^h 
banquet held at the abbey of St. Denis in honour of the obsequies 
of King Charles YII., " we have lost our master ; let each look 
after himself." The old warrior foresaw that the new reign would 
not be lilie that which had just ended. Charles YII. had been a 
prince of indolent disposition, more inclined to pleasure than 
ambition, whom the long and severe trials of his life had moulded 
to government without his having any passion for governing, and 
who had become in a quiet way a wise and powerful king without 
any eager desire to be incessantly and every where chief actor and 
master. His son Louis, on the contrary, was completely possessed 
with a craving for doing, talking, agitating, domineering, and 
reaching, no matter by what means, the different and manifold 
ends he proposed to himself. Any thing but prepossessing in 
appearance, supported on long and thin shanks, vulgar in looks and 
often designedly ill-dressed, and undignified in his manners though 
haughty in mind, he was powerful by the sheer force of a mind 
marvellously lively, subtle, imerring, ready, and inventive, and of 
a character indefatigably active, and pursuing success as a passion 
without any scruple or embarrassment in the employment of means. 
His contemporaries, after observing his reign for some time, gave 
him the name of the universal spider, so relentlessly did he labour 
to weave a web of which he himself occupied the centre and 
extended the filaments in all directions. • 



202 History of France. 

At the accession of Louis XI. the feudal system was still 

powerful. At the summit, the houses of Eurguudy, Bourbou^ 

Orleans, Anjou and Brittany ; the degrees immediately below were 

occupied by the families of Armagnac, Albret and Saint Pol. 

Against feudalism the king began, a desperate warfare, and the 

first decrees which he published were as much the expression of his 

hatred, as of his determination to do away with every reminiscence 

of his father's government. Thus we accoimt for the parsimonious 

character of the new court, the annulling of the pragmatic 

sanction, the prohibition of hunting, the dismissal of the late 

king's ministers, whose places were given to men of low extraction 

(Tristan THermite, La Balue, Olivier le Daim), etc., etc. Thoroughly 

irritated by these measures, and by others besides, such as that 

wliich deprived the duke of Burgundy of the lieutenancy of 

JS'ormandy, which had first been bestowed upon him, the great 

A.D. 1464. malcontents formed together, at the end of 1464, an alliance "for to re- 
League of . . 
the Com- monstrate with the king," says Commynes, " upon the bad order and 

mon Weal, injustice he kept up in his kingdom, considering themselves strong 
enough to force him if he would not mend his ways ; and this war was 
called tlie common weal, because it was undertaken under colour of 
being for the common weal of the kingdom, the which was soon con- 
verted into private weal." The aged duke of Burgundy, sensible and 
wary as he was, gave at first only a hesitating and slack adherence 
to the league : but his son Chajles, count of Charolais, entered into 
it passionately, and the father was no more in a condition to resist 
his son than he was inclined to follow him. The number of the 
declared malcontents increased rapidly ; and the chiefs received at 
Paris itself, in the church of Notre Dame, the adhesion and the 
signatures of those who wished to join them. Louis XL had no 
sooner obtained a clear insight into the league of the princes than 
he set to work with his usual activity and knowledge of the world 
to checkmate it. To rally together his own partisans and to 
separate his foes, such was the two-fold end he pursued, at first 
Louis XI. "with some success. He would have been glad to have nothing to 
grapples do but to negotiate and talk. Though he was personally brave, he 

feudalism ^^^ ^*^* ^^^® ^'^^ ^^^ ^^^ unforeseen issues. He belonged to the 
class of ambitious despots who prefer strategem to force. But the 
very ablest speeches and artifices, even if they do not remain 
entirely fruitless, are not sufficient to reduce matters promptly to 
order when great interests are threatened, passions violently excited, 
and factions let loose in the arena. Between the League of the 
Common Weal and Louis XL there was a question too great to be, 
at the very outset, settled peacefully. It was feudalism in decline 



The King and the Feudal System, 203 

at grips with the kingship which had "been growing greater and 
greater for two centuries. The lords did not trust the king's 
promises ; and one amongst those lords was too powerful to yield 
without a fight. At the beginning Louis had, in Auvergne and in 
Berry, some successes which decided a few of the rebels, the most 
insignificant, to accept truces and enter upon parleys ; but the 
great princes, the dukes of Burgundy, Brittany, and Berry, waxed 
more and more angry. 

The two armies met at Montlhery, on the 16th of July, 1465. A.D. 1465. 
Breze, who commanded the king's advance-guard, immediately ^^**'f ?^ 
went into action and was one of the first to be killed. Louis came 
Tip to his assistance with troops in rather loose order ; the affair 
became hot and general ; the French for a moment wavered, and a 
rumour ran through the ranks that the king had just been killed. 
" K'o, my friends," said Louis, taking off his helmet, " no, I am 
not dead ; defend your king with good courage." The wavering 
was transferred to the Burgundians, and the advantage virtually 
remained on the side of the French. 

Negotiations for peace speedily followed. There was no diffi- Treaties of 
cuity about them. Louis was ready to make sacrifices as soon as Conflaus 
he recognized the necessity for them, being quite determined, how- winr*"^ 
ever, in his heart, to recall them as soon as fortune came back to 
him. Two distinct treaties were concluded : one at Conflans on the 
5th of October, 1465, between Louis and the count of Charolais ; 
and the other at St. Maur on the 29th of October, between Louis 
and the other princes of the League. By one or the other of the 
treaties the king granted nearly every demand that had been made 
upon him ; to the count of Charolais he gave up all the towns of 
importance in Picardy ; to the duke of Berry he gave the duchy 
of Normandy, with entire sovereignty ; and the other princes, 
independently of the different territories that had been conceded to 
them, all received large sums in ready money. Scarcely were the 
treaties signed and the princes returned each to his own dominions, 
when a quarrel arose between the duke of Brittany and the new 
duke of Normandy. Louis, who was watching for dissensions 
between his enemies, went at once to see the duke of Brittany, 
and made with him a private convention for mutual security. 
Then, having his movements free, he suddenly entered Normandy 
to retake possession of it as a province which, notwithstanding the 
cession of it just made to his brother, the king of France could 
not dispense with. Fvreux, Gisors, Gournay, Louviers, and even 
Eouen fell, without much resistance, again into his power. 

In order to be safe in the direction of Burgundy as well as that 



204 History of France. 

of Brittany, Louis had entered into negotiations with Edward IV., 

king of England, and had made him offers, perhaps even promises, 

which seemed to trench upon the rights ceded by the treaty of 

Confians to the duke of Burgundy as to certain districts of 

Picardy. The count of Charolais was informed of it, and complained 

bitterly of the king's obstinate pretensions and vmderhand ways. 

A serious incident now happened, which for a while distracted the 

A.D. 1467. attention of the two rivals from their mutual recriminations. Duke 

PhT th -P^^^^P ^'^ Good, who had for some time past been visibly declining 

Good. in body and mind, was visited at Bruges by a stroke of apoplexy, 

soon discovered to be fatal. 
Insurrec- A few days after his death, several of the principal Flemish 
Ghent and cities, Ghent first and then Liege, rose against the new duke of Bur- 
Liege, gundy in defence of their liberties already ignored or threatened. 
The intrigues of Louis were not unconnected with these seditions. 
He would undoubtedly have been very glad to have seen his most 
formidable enemy beset, at the very commencement of his ducal 
reign, by serious embarrassments, and obliged to let the king of 
France settle without trouble his differences with his brother Duke 
Charles of Berry and with the duke of Brittany. But the new 
duke of Burgundy was speedily triumphant over the Flemish 
insurrections ; and after these successes, at the close of the year 
1467, he was so powerful and so unfettered in his movements that 
Louis might with good reason fear the formation of a fresh league 
amongst his great neighbours in coalition against him, and perhaps 
even in communication with the English, who were ever ready to 
seek in France allies for the furtherance of their attempts to 
regain there the fortunes wrested from them by Joan of Arc and 
Charles YII. In view of such a position, Louis formed a resolution, 
unpalatable no doubt to one so jealous of his own power, but 
indicative of intelligence and boldness ; he confronted the difficul- 
ties of home government in order to prevent perils from without. 
He summoned the states-general to a meeting at Tours on the 
1st of April, 1468, and obtained from them the annulment of the 
concessions he had made, more particularly with reference to Nor- 
mandy, a province which was within so dangerous a proximity of 
England. 
A.D. 1468. Thus fortified by their burst of attachment, Louis, by the treaty 
Treaty of q£ Ancenis, signed on the 10th of September, 1468, put an end to 
his differences with Francis XL, duke of Brittany, who gave up his 
alliance with the house of Burgundy, and undertook to prevail upon 
Duke Charles of France to accept an arbitration for the purpose of 
settling, before two years were over, the question of his territorial 



Louis XL at Peronne. 205 

appanage in the place of IS'ormandy. In the meanwhile a pension 
of sixty thousand livres was to be paid by the crown to that prince. 
Thus Louis was left with- the new duke, Charles of Burgundy, as 
the only adversary he had to face. His advisers were divided as 
to the course to be taken with this formidable vassal. Was he to 
be dealt with by war or by negotiation ] Count De Dampmartin, 
marshal De Eouault, and nearly all the military men earnestly 
advised war ; but the king did not like to risk the kingdom ; and 
he had more confidence in negotiation than in violent measures. 
Two of his principal advisers, the constable De St. Pol and the 
cardinal De la Bakie, bishop of Evreux, were of his opinion, and 
urged him to the top of his bent. Accordinglj'' he started for 
Noyon on the 2nd of October, taking with him the constable, the 
cardinal, his confessor, and, for all his escort, four score of his faith- 
fvd Scots and sixty men-at-arms. Duke Charles went to meet him interview 
outside the town. They embraced one another and returned on between 
foot to Peronne, chatting familiarly, and the king with his hand France and 
resting on the duke's shoulder in token of amity, Louis had the duke of 
quarters at the house of the chamberlain of the town ; the castle ^^ /eronne 
being, it was said, in too bad a state and too ill-furnished for his 
reception. " King Louis, on coming to Peronne, had not con- 
sidered," says Commynes, " that he had sent two ambassadors to 
the folks of Liege to excite them against the duke. ^Nevertheless 
the said ambassadors had advanced matters so well that they had jjevolt 
already made a great mass (of rebels). The Liegese came and took of the 
by surprise the town of Tongres, wherein were the bishop of Liege ^'■^S^^®* 
and the lord of Humbercourt, whom they took also, slaying more- 
over some serrants of the said bishop." The fugitives who reported 
this news at Peronne made the matter a great deal worse than it 
was ; they had no doubt, they said, but that the bishop and sire 
d'Humbercourt had also been murdered ; and Charles had no 
more doubt about it than they. Exasperated by so glaring an act 
of treachery, Charles the Eash confined his sovereign within the 
tower where Charles the Simple had died in 929 ; and, through the 
happy mediation of Philip de Commynes, obliged him to sign the 
treaty of Peronne (1468). According to the terms of this agree- 
ment the king renounced every suzerainty over the possessions of 
the duke of Burgundy ; he further gave the province of Cham- 
pagne to his own brother, and consented to the destruction of the 
city of Liege. He had even the cruelty of witnessing the massacre 
of those whose rebellion he had not only encouraged but assisted. 

But Louis XL's deliverance after his quasi-captivity at Peronne, 
and the new treaty he had concluded with Duke Charles, were and 



206 



History of France. 



Continued 

rivalry 

between 

France and 

Burgundy. 



A.D. 1472. 
Siege of 
Beauvais. 

Joan 
Fourquet. 



Relations 
with Eng. 
land. 



could "be only a temporary break in the struggle between these two 
princes, destined as they were both by character and position to 
irremediable incompatibility. They were too powerful and too 
different to live at peace when they were such close neighbours and 
when their relations were so complicated. Between 1468 and 
1477, from the incident at Peronne to the death of Charles at thi 
siege of I^ancy, the history of the two princes was nothing bu: 
one constant alternation between ruptures and re-adjustments, hos- 
tilities and truces, wherein both were constantly changing their 
posture, their language, and their allies. It was at one time the 
affairs of the duke of Brittany or those of Prince Charles of France, 
become duke of Guienne ; at another it was the relations with the 
different claimants to the throne of England, or the fate of the 
towns, in Picardy, handed over to the duke of Burgundy by the 
treaties of Conflans and Peronne, which served as a ground or 
pretext for the frequent recurrences of war. In 1471 St. Quentin 
opened its gates to Count Louis of St. Pol, constable of France. 
The next year (1472) war broke out. Duke Charles went and laid 
siege to Beauvais, and on the 27th of June delivered the first 
assault. The inhabitants were at this moment left almost alone to 
defend their town. A young girl of eighteen, Joan Fourquet, whom 
a burgher's wife of Beauvais, Madame Laisne, her mother by adop- 
tion, had bred up in the history, still so recent, of Joan of Arc, 
throw herself into the midst of the throng, holding up her little axe 
(hachette) before the image of St. Angadresme, patroness of the 
town, and cryiag, " glorious virgin, come to my aid ; to arms ! 
to arms ! " The assault was repulsed ; reinforcements came up 
from I^oyon, Amiens, and Paris, under the orders of the marshal de 
Eouault. Charles remained for twelve days longer before the place, 
looking for a better chance ; but on the 12th of July he decided 
upon raising the siege, and took the road to Il^ormandy. Some days 
before attacking Beauvais, he had taken, not without difficulty, 
Nesle in the Vermandois. *' There it was," says Commynes, " that 
he first committed a horrible and wicked deed of war, which had 
never been his wont ; this was burning every thing every where ; 
those who were taken alive were hanged ; a pretty large number had 
their hands cut off. It mislikes me to speak of such cruelty ; but 
I was on the spot, and must needs say something about it." Com- 
mynes undoubtedly said something about it to Charles himself, 
who answered, '* It is the fruit borne by the tree of war ; it would 
have been the fate of Beauvais if I could have taken the town." 

Between the two rivals in France, relations with England were 
a subject of constant manoeuvring and strife. In spite of reverses 



Edward IV. attempts to invade France. 207 

on tlio Continent and civil wars in their own island, the kings of 
England had not abandoned their claims to the crown of France; 
they were still in possession of Calais ] and the memory of the 
battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt was still a tower of strength 
to them. Between 1470 and 1472 the house of York had 
trinmphed over the house of Lancaster; and Edward IV. was 
tindisputed king. In his views touching France he found a natural 
ally in the duke of Burgundy ; and it was in concert with Charles A.D. 1478. 
that Edward was incessantly concocting and attempting plots and ^^^ ^'^" 
campaigns against Louis XI. In 1474 he, hy a herald, called upon in uor- 
Louis to give up to him l!^ormandy and Guienne, else, he told him, mandy. 
he would cross over to France with his army. " TeU your master," 
answered Louis coolly, " that I should not advise him to." Edward 
landed at Calais on the 22nd of June, 1475, with an army of 
from sixteen to eighteen thousand men thirsting for conquest and 
pillage in France, and the duke of Burgundy had promised to go 
and join him with a considerable force ; but the latter after having 
appeared for a moment at Calais to concert measures with his ally, 
returned no more, and even hesitated about admitting the English 
into his towns of Artois and Picardy. Edward waited for him 
nearly two months at Peronne, but in vain. During this time 
Louis negotiated ; he fixed his quarters at Amiens, and Edward 
came and encamped half a league from the town. An agreement 
was soon come to as to the terms of peace. King Edward bound 
himself to withdraw with his army to England so soon as Louis XL 
should have paid him seventy-five thousand crowns. Louis promised 
besides to pay annually to King Edward fifty thousand crowns, 
in two payments, during the time that both princes were alive. A 
truce for seven years was concluded ; they made mutual promises 
to lend each other aid if they were attacked by their enemies or by 
their own subjects in rebellion ; and Prince Charles, the eldest 
son of Louis XL, was to marry Elizabeth, Edward's daughter, 
when both should be of marriageable age. Lastly, Queen Margaret 
of Anjou, who had been a prisoner in England since the death of 
her husband, Henry VL, was to be set at liberty and removed to 
France, on renouncing all claim to the crown of England. These 
conditions having been formulated, they were signed by the two 
kings at Pecquigny on the Somme, three leagues from Amiens, on 
the 29th of August, 1475. 

The duke of Burgundy, as soon as he found out that the king of Lorraine 
France had, under the name of truce, made peace for seven years v"q^^* 
with the king of England, and that Edward IV. had recrossed the the Raali. 
Channel with his army, saw that his attempts, so far, were a 



208 



History of France. 



Charles 
the Bash 
attacks 
Lorraine. 



A.T) 1472. 
Death of 
the duke 
of Guienne. 
(May 24). 



failure. Accordingly he too lost no time in signing [on the IStli of 
fcseptember, 1475] a truce with King Louis for nine years, and 
directing his ambition and aiming his blows against other quarters 
than western France. Two little states, his neighbours on the 
east, Lorraine and Switzerland, became the object and the theatre 
of his passion for war. Lorraine had at that time for its duke 
Eene IL, of the house of Anjou through his mother Yolande, a 
young prince who was wavering as so many others were between 
France and Burgundy. Charles suddenly entered Lorraine, took 
possession of several castles, had the inhabitants who resisted 
hanged, besieged Nancy, which made a valiant defence, and ended 
by conquering the capital as well as the country-places, leaving 
Duke Eene no asylum but the court of Louis XL, of whom the 
Lorraine prince had begged a support, which Louis after his 
custom had promised without rendering it effectual. Charles did 
not stop there. He had already been more than once engaged in 
hostilities with his neighbours the Swiss ; and he now learned that 
they had just made a sanguinary raid upon the district of Vaud, 
the domain of a petty prince of the house of Savoy, and a devoted 
servant of the duke of Burgundy's. Scarcely two months after the 
.capture of N"ancy, Charles set out, on the 11th of June, 1476, to go 
and avenge his client and wreak his haughty and turbulent 
humour upon these bold peasants of the Alps. 

In spite of the truce he had but lately concluded with Charles 
the Eash, the prudent Louis did not cease to keep an attentive 
■watch upon him, and to reap advantage, against him, from the 
leisure secured to the king of France by his peace with the king 
of England and the duke of Brittany. A late occurrence had still 
further strengthened his position : his brother Charles, who became 
duke of Guienne, in 1469, after the treaty of Peronne, had died on 
the 24th of May, 1472. There were sinister rumours abroad touch- 
ing this death. Louis was suspected of having poisoned his 
brother. At any rate this event had important results for him. 
Not only did it set him free from all fresh embarrassment in that 
direction, but it also restored to him the beautiful province of 
Guienne and many a royal client. Of the great feudal chieftains 
who, in 1464, had formed against him the League of the Common 
Weal, the duke of Burgundy was the only one left on the scene 
and in a condition to put him in peril. 

Louis XT. felt, however, now sure of success, for his principal 
adversary, Charles the Eash, had begun the prosecution of a plan 
•which proved beyond his strength, and the failure of which even- 
tually turned to the advantage of tlie king of France. The dominions 



Charles the Rash defeated, 209 

of Charles consisted of the duchy and county of Burgundy on the 
■one side, and of the ^Netherlands on the other — feudal regime here, 
communal regime there. Between these divisions no communications 
existed, and it was in order to form a homogeneous whole of the 
two discordant and antagonistic parts that Charles the Bold staked 
his power, his treasures and his life. He wished to be a king, and 
with the hope of obtaining the creation of a kingdom of Belgian- 
Gaul, he had courted the alliance of the emperor Frederick III., 
promising to the archduke Maximilian the hand of his daughter 
Mary. Nothing resulted from this scheme on account of tho 
sudden retreat of the emperor, who left Treves on the very day 
before that which had been fixed for the ceremony of consecra- 
tion. Mad with fury, Charles the Rash then turned against Ger- 
many. After a long siege he failed to take the city of INeuss, 
and signed with Louis XI. the peace of Soleure which has been 
called Treve Marcliande, on account of the stipulations it con- '<Treve 
tained respecting freedom of commerce between France, England, Mar- 
and the Netherlands. Safe, as he thought, on that side, he had 
leisure to attack both the Swiss and the Lorraine where he had 
for his client the old king Rene. He started from Besangon on. 
the 6th of February to take the field with an array amounting, it 
is said, to thirty or forty thousand men, provided with a power- 
ful artillery and accompanied by an immense baggage-train, wherein 
Charles delighted to display his riches and magnificence in contrast 
with the simplicity and roughness of his ]3ersonal habits. At the 
rumour of such an armament, the Swiss attempted to keep off 
the war from their country. Charles, however, gave no heed, saw 
nothing in their representations but an additional reason for 
hurrying on his movements with confidence, and on the 19th of A.D. 1476. 
February arrived before Grans )n, a little town in the district of ^ i- ^^ 
Vaud, where war had already begun. There he was tremendously (Feb.), 
beaten by the Swiss ; the squadrons of his chivalry were not able 
to make any impression upon the battalions of Berne, Schwitz, 
Soleure, and Fribourg, armed with pikes eighteen feet long ; and 
at sight of the mountaineers marching with huge strides and 
lowered heads upon their foes and heralding their advance by the 
lowings of the Imli of Uri and the cow of Unterwalden, two enor- 
mous instruments made of buffalo-horn, and given, it was said, to 
their ancestors by Charlemagne, the whole Burgundian army, 
seized with fright, fled in wild confusion. On the 22nd of June,, 
another desperate battle was fought at Morat, and hopelessly lost 
by the Burgundians. Charles had still three thousand horse, but and Morat 
he saw them break up, and he himself had great difficulty in (June). 



2IO History of France. 

getting away, with merely a dozen men "behind him, and reaching 
Merges, twelve leagues from Morat. Eight or ten thousand of his 
men had fallen, more than half, it is said, killed in cold blood, 
after the fight. JSTever had the Swiss been so dead set against 
their foes ; and " as cruel as at Morat " was for a long while a com- 
mon expression. 
The duke Charles learned before long that the Swiss were not his most 
makes war threatening foes, and that he had something else to do instead of 
going after them amongst their mountains. During his two cam- 
paigns against them, the duke of Lorraine, Eene II., whom he had 
despoiled of his dominions and driven from I^ancy, had been 
wandering amongst neighbouring princes and people in France, 
Germany, and Switzerland, at the courts of Louis XL and the 
emperor Frederic III., on visits to the patricians of Berne, and 
in the free towns of the Rhine. He was young, sprightly, amiable, 
and brave ; he had been well received and certain promises had 
been made him. His partisans in Lorraine recovered confidence 
in his fortunes ; the city of Strasbourg gave him some cannon, four 
hundred cavalry, and eight hundred infantry ; Louis XL lent him 
some money ; and Eene befoi'e long found himself in a position 
to raise a small army and retake Epinal, Saint-Die, Yaudemont, 
and the majority of the minor towns in Lorraine. Finally he 
A D 1477 attacked and defeated the Burgundians at Nancy on January the 
Battle of 5th, 1477. The duke was killed on the field of battle. Charles 
■^^^•^y* the Rash had left only a daughter, Mary of Burgundy, sole heiress 
Charles the of all his dominions. To annex this magnificent heritage to the 
Eash. crown of France by the marriage of the heiress with the dauphin, 

who was one day to be Charles VIIL, was clearly for the best in- 
terests of the nation as well as of the French kingship, and such 
had. accordingly, been Louis XL's first idea. 
Mary of All the efforts of Louis the XL, however, did not succeed. On 
Burgundy ^^^g jg^i^ of August, 1477, seven months after the battle of :N"ancy 
the Lm- ^^^ ^^ death of Charles the Rash, Archduke Maximilian, son of 
reror the emperor Frederic III., arrived at Ghent to wed Mary of 

mUian Burgundy. "The moment he caught sight of his betrothed," say 
the Flemish chroniclers, "they both bent down to the ground and 
turned as pale as death ; a sign of mutual love according to some, 
an omen of unhappiness according to others." Next day, August 
19, the marriage was celebrated with great simplicity in the chapel 
of the Hotel de Yille ; and Maximilian swore to respect the 
privileges of Ghent. A few days afterwards he renewed the same 
oath at Bruges, in the midst of decorations bearing the modest 
device, "Most glorious prince, defend us lest we perish" {Glorio^ 



Policy of Louis XI. 2ii 

sissiine piinceps, defeTide nos ne pereamus). I^ot only did Louis XI. 
thus fail in his first wise design: of incorporating with France, hy. 
means of a marriage between his son the dauphin and Princess 
Mary, the heritage of the dukes of Burgundy, but he suffered the 
heiress and a great part of the heritage to pass into the hands of 
the son of the German Emperor ; and thereby he paved the way 
for that determined rivalry between the houses of France and Aus- 
tria, which was a source of so many dangers and woes to both 
states during three centuries. In vain, when the marriage of 
Maximilian and Mary was completed, did Louis XL attempt to 
struggle against his new and dangerous neighbour ; his campaigns 
in tlie Flemish provinces, in 1478 and 1479, had no great result; 
he lost, on the 7th of August, 1479, the battle of Guinegate, j^ p j^-^g 
between St. Omer and Therouanne ; and before long, tired of Battle of 
war, which was not his favourite theatre for the display of his ^^^^^^^g^*®- 
abilities, he ended by concluding with Maximilian a truce at first, 
and then a peace, which, in spite of some conditionals favourable to 
France, left the principal and the fatal consequences of the Austro- 
Burgundian marriage to take full effect. This event marked 
th.e stoppage of that great, national policy which had prevailed 
during the first part of Louis XL's reign. Joan of Arc and 
Charles VII. had driven the English from France ; and for sixteen 
years Louis XI. had, by fighting and gradually destroying the 
great vassals who made alliance with them, prevented them from 
regaining a footing there. That was work as salutary as it was 
glorious for the nation and the French kingship. At the death 
of Charles the Rash the work was accomplished ; Louis XL was 
the only Power left in France, without any great peril from 
without and without any great rival within ; but he then fell 
under the sway of mistaken ideas and a vicious spirit. Old in 
years, master-power still though beaten in his last game of policy, 
he appeared to all as he really was and as he had been prediscerned 
to be by only such eminent observers as Commynes, that is, a 
crooked, swindling, utterly selfish, vind'ictive, cruel man. l^ot 
only did he hunt down implacably the men who, after haviner 
served him, had betrayed or deserted him ; he revelled in the 
vengeance he took and the sufferings he inflicted on them. Note Cruelty of 
for instance, his treatment of Cardinal Balue, whom he caused to be ^^^^^ XI. 
confined in a cage, "eight feet broad," says Commynes, "and 
only one foot higher than a man's stature, covered with iron plates 
outside and inside, and fitted with terrible bars." In it the un- Torture of 
fortunate prelate passed eleven years, and it was not until 1480 jalue^*^ 
that he was let out, at the solicitation of Pope Sixtus IV., to whom 

p 2 



212 History of France. 

Louis XI., being old and ill, thought he could not possibly refuse 
this favour. 

He was still more pitiless towards a man more formidable and 
less subordinate, both in character and origin, than Cardinal Balue. 
A.D 1475. Louis of Luxembourg, count of St. Pol, had been from his youth 
the^eo nt "P engaged in the wars and intrigues of the sovereigns and great 
of St. Pol. feudal lords of western Europe, France, England, Germany, Bur- 
gundy, Brittany and Lorraine. From 1433 to 1475 he served and 
betrayed them all in turn, seeking and obtaining favours, incurring 
and braving rancour, at one time on one side and at another time 
on another, acting as constable of France and as diplomatic agent 
for the duke of Burgundy, raising troops and taking towns for 
Louis XL, for Charles the Rash, for Edward IV., for the German 
emperor, and trying nearly always to keep for himself what he had 
taken on another's account ; given up at last, by the duke of Bur- 
gundy, to the king, he was beheaded on the 19th of December, 
1475, in Paris, on the Place de Greve. 

In August, 147-7, the battle of Nancy had been fought ; Charles 
the Pash had been killed ; and the line of the dukes of Burgundy 
had been extinguished. Louis XT. remained master of the battle- 
field on which the great risks and great scenes of his life had been 
passed through. It seemed as if he ought to fear nothing now, and 
that the day for clemency had come. But such was not the king's 
opinion ; two cruel passions, suspicion and vengeance, had taken 
possession of his soul ; he remained convinced, not without reason, 
that nearly all the great feudal lords who had been his foes were 
continuing to conspire against hira, and that he ought not, on his 
side, ever to cease from striving against them. The trial of the 
constable, St. Pol, had confirmed all his suspicions ; he had dis- 
covered thereby traces and almost proofs of a design for a long time 
past conceived and pursued by the constable and his associates, the 
design of seizing the king, keeping him prisoner, and setting his 
son, the dauphin, on the throne, with a regency composed of a 
council of lords. Amongst the declared or presumed adherents 
of this project, the king had found James d'Armagnac, duke of 
Nemours, the companion and friend of his youth, for his father, 
the count of Pardiac, had been governor to Louis, at that time 
dauphin. Arrested, sent to the Bastille, and tried on a charge of 
A.D. 1477 high treason, the duke de Nemours was beheaded on the 4th of 
f>f*/^v^ August, 1477. A disgusting detail, reproduced by several modern 
Nemours, writers, has almost been received into history. Louis XL, it is 
said, ordered the children of the duke of Nemours to be placed 
under the scaffold and besprinkled with their father's blood. None 



Louis XI. and his friends. 213 

of Ms contemporaries, even the most hostile to Louis XI., and even 
amongst those who, at the states-general held in 1484, one of them 
after his death, raised their voices against the trial of the duke of 
Nemours and in favour of his children, has made any mention of 
this pretended atrocity. 

The same rule of historical equity makes it incumhent upon us xhe Meads 
to remark that, in spite of his feelings of suspicion and revenge, ofl-ouisXl, 
Louis XI. could perfectly well appreciate the men of honour in Damp- 
whom he was able to have confidence, and would actually confide martin, 
in them even contrary to ordinary probabilities. He numbered 
amongst his most distinguished servants three men who had begun 
by serving his enemies and whom he conquered, so to speak, by his 
penetration and his firm mental grasp of policy. They were Philip 
of Chabannes, count de Dampmartin, Odet d'Aydie, lord of j^^ ^^^^ ^^ 
Lescun in Beam, whom he created count of Comminges, and Lesoun. 
finally Philip de Commynes, the most precious of the politic con- phiUp de 
quests made by Louis in the matter of eminent counsellors, to whom Commynes, 
he remained as faithful as they were themselves faithful and useful 
to him. The Memoires of Commynes are the most striking proof 
of the rare and unfettered political intellect placed by the future 
historian at the king's service and of the estimation in which the 
king had wit enough to hold it. 

Louis XL rendered to France four centuries ago, during a reign Home ad- 
of twenty-two years, three great services, the traces and influence ministra- 
of which exist to this day. He prosecuted steadily the work of ^^^^ 
Joan of Arc and Charles VII., the expulsion of a foreign kingship 
and the triumph of national independence and national dignity. 
By means of the provinces which he successively won, wholly or 
partly. Burgundy, Franche-Comte, Artois, Provence, Anjou, Eous- 
sillon, and Barrois, he caused France to make a great stride 
towards territorial unity within her natural boundaries. By the 
defeat he inflicted on the great vassals, the favour he showed the 
middle classes, and the use he had the sense to make of this new 
social force, he contributed powerfully to the formation of the 
French nation and to its unity under a national government. 
Feudal society had not an idea of how to form itself into a nation 
or discipline its forces under one head ; Louis XL proved its 
political weakness, determined its fall, and laboured to place in its 
stead France and monarchy. Herein are the great facts of his 
reign and the proofs of his superior mind. 

But side by side with these powerful symptoms of a new regimen 
appeared also the vices of which that regimen contained the germ, 
and those of the man himself who was labouring to found it. 



214 History of France. 

Feudal society, perceiving itseK to be threatened, at one time 
attacked Louis XI. with passion, at another entered into violent 
disputes against him ; and Louis, in order to struggle with it, 
employed all the practices at one time crafty and at another vio- 
lent that belong to absolute power. Craft usually predominated in 
his proceedings, violence being often too perilous for him to risk it ; 
he did not consider himself in a condition to say brazen-facedly, 
*' Might before right," but he disregarded right in the case of his 
adversaries, and he did not deny himself any artifice, any lie, any 
baseness, however specious, in order to trick them or ruin them 
secretly, when he did not feel himself in a position to crush them at a 
Character ^^ow. He was " familiar," but " by no means vulgar ; " he was in 
of LoTxisXI conversation able and agreealde, with a mixture, however, of petu- 
lance and indiscretion, even when he was meditating some perfidy ; 
and " there is much need," he used to say, " that my tongue should 
sometimes serve me ; it has hurt me often enough." The most 
puerile superstitions as well as those most akin to a blind piety 
found their way into his mind. When he received any bad news, 
he would cast aside for ever the dress he was wearing when the 
news came ; and of death he had a dread which was carried to the 
extent of pusillanimity and ridiculousness. " Whilst he was every 
day," says M. de Barante, "becoming more suspicious, more absolute, 
more terrible to his children, to the princes of the blood, to his old 
servants, and to his wisest counsellors, there was one man who, 
without any fear of his wrath, treated him with brutal rudeness. 
This was James Coettier, his doctor. When the king would some- 
His super- times complain of it before certain confidential servants : ' I know 
stitioa. ygpy -v^ell,' Coettier would say, ' that some fine morning you'll send 
lue where you've sent so many others ; but, 'sdeath, you'll not live 
a week after ! ' " Then the king would coax him, overwhelm him 
with caresses, raise his salary to ten thousand crowns a month, make 
him a present of rich lordships ; and he ended by making hini 
premier president of the Court of Exchequer. All churches and 
all sanctuaries of any small celebrity were recipients of his obla- 
tions, and it was not the salvation of his soul but life and health 
that he asked for in return. 

Whether they were sincere or assumed, the superstitions of 
Louis XI. did not prevent him from appreciating and promoting 
the progress of civilization, towards which the fifteenth century saw 
the first real general impulse. He favoured the free development of 
industry and trade ; he protected printing, in its infancy, and 
scientific studies, especially the study of medicine ; by his author! 
nation, it is said, the operation for the stone was tried, for the first 



Louis XI. favours the progress of civilization, 215 

time in France, upon a criminal under sentence of death, who 
recovered and was pardoned ; and he welcomed the philological 
scholars who were at this time labouring to diffuse through 
"Western Europe the works of Greek and Eoman antiquity. He 
instituted, at first for his own and before long for the public service, 
post-horses and the letter-post within his kingdom. Towards 
intellectual and social movement he had not the mistrust and His re- 
antipathy of an old, one-grooved, worn-out, unproductive despotism ; P'^'"^ ^"* 
his kingly despotism was new, and, one might almost say, innova- meats, 
tional, for it sprang and was growing up from the ruins of feudal 
rights and liberties which had inevitably ended in monarchy. But 
despotism's good services are shortlived ; it has no need to last long 
before it generates iniquity and tyranny ; and that of Louis XI., in 
the latter part of his reign, bore its natural, unavoidable fruits. 
" His mistrust," says M. de Barante, " became horrible and almost 
insane ; every year he had surrounded his castle of Plessis with 
more walls, ditches and rails. On the towers were iron sheds, a 
shelter from arrows and even artillery. More than eighteen hundred 
of those planks bristling with nails, called caltrops, were distri- 
buted over the yonder side of the ditch. There were every day four 
hundred crossbow-men on duty, with orders to shoot whosoever 
approached. Every suspected passer-by was seized, and carried off 
to Tristan I'Hermite, the provost marshal. No great proofs were 
required for a swing on the gibbet or for the inside of a sack and a 
plunge in the Loire. 

An unexpected event occurred at this time to give a little more A.D, 1482. 

heart to Louis XL, who wa^ now very ill, and to mingle with his £^^^^ °} 

° Mary of 

gloomy broodings a gleam of future prospects. Mary of Burgundy, Burgun y. 

daughter of Charles the Eash, died at Bruges on the 27th of 

March, 1482, leaving to her husband, Maximilian of Austria, a 

daughter, hardly three years of age, Princess Marguerite by name, 

heiress to the Burgundian-Elemish dominions which had not come 

into the possession of the king of France. Louis, as soon as he 

heard the news, conceived the idea and the hope of making up for 

the reverse he had experienced five years previously through the 

marriage of Mary of Burgundy. He would arrange espousals 

between his son the dauphin, Charles, thirteen years old, and the 

infant princess left by Mary, and thus recover for the crown of 

France the beautiful domains he had allowed to slip from him. A 

negotiation was opened at once on the subject between Louis, 

Maximilian, and the estates Of Flanders, and, on the 23rd of 

December, 1482, it resulted in a treaty, concluded at Arras, 

which arranged for the marriage and regulated the mutual 



21 6 History of France, 

conditions. In January, 1483, the ambassadors from the estales of 
Flanders and from Maximilian, who then for the first time assnmed 
the title of archduke, came to France for the ratification of the 
treaty. 
A.D. 1483. On the 2nd of June following, the infant princess, Marguerite of 
Marguerite Austria, was brought by a solemn embassy to Paris first, and then, 

of Aiist)ri3> ' o ■u *j ' ' 

betrothed f>n '^^ 23rd of June, to Amboiso, where her betrothal to the 
to the Dau- dauphin, Charles, was celebrated. Louis XI. did not feel fit for 
removal to Amboise ; and he would not even receive at Plessis-les- 
Tours the new Flemish embassy. Assuredly neither the king nor 
any of the actors in this regal scene foresaw that this marriage, 
which they with reason looked upon as a triumph of French policy, 
would never be consummated ; that, at the request of the court of 
France, the pope would annul the betrothal ; and that, nine years 
after its celebration, in 1492, the Austrian princess, after having been 
brought up at Amboise under the guardianship of the duchess of 
Bourbon, Anne, eldest daughter of Louis XI , would be sent back 
to her father, Emperor Maximilian, by her affianced, Charles VIII., 
then king of France, who preferred to become the husband of a 
French princess with a French province for dowry, Anne, duchess 
of Brittany. 
A.D. 1483. It was in March, 1481, that Louis XI. had his first attack of that 
Death of apoplexy which, after several repeated strokes, reduced him to such 
a state o^ weakness that in June, 1483, he felt himself and declared 
himself not in a fit state to be presejit at his son's betrothal. Two 
months afterwards, on the 25th of August, St. Louis' day, he had 
a fresh stroke, and lost all consciousness and speech. 

On Saturday, August 30th, 1483, between seven and eight in 
the evening, he expired, saying, " Our Lady of Embrun, my good 
mistress, have pity upon me ; the mercies of the Lord will I sing 
for ever (mise?'icordias Domini in teternum cantabo)" 

Louis XI. has had the good fortune to be described and appraised, 
in his own day too, by the most distinguished and independent of 
his councillors, Philip de Commynes, and, three centuries after- 
vrards, by one of the most thoughtful and the soundest intellects 
amongst the philosophers of the eighteenth century, Duclos, who, 
moreover, had the advantage of being historiographer of France 
and of having studied the history of that reign in authentic docu- 
ments. AVe reproduce here the two judgments, the agreement of 
which is remarkable : — 

" God," says Commynes, " had created our king more wise, 
liberal, and full of manly virtue than the princes who reigned with 
him and in his day, and who were his enemies and neighbours. In 



J 



Death of the king. — Regency. 21/ 

all there was good and evil, for they were men ; but, without 
flattery, in him were more things appertaining to the office of king 
than in any of the rest. I saw them nearly all, and knew what 
they could do." 

" Louis XI.," says Duclos, " was far from being without reproach j 
few princes have deserved so much ; but it may be said that he 
was equally celebrated for his vices and his virtues, and that, every- 
thing being put in the balance, he was a king." 

We will be more exacting than Commynes and Duclos ; we will 
not consent to apply to Louis XI. the words liberal, virtuous, and 
virtue ; he had not greatness of soul, nor uprightness of character, 
nor kindness of heart ; he was neither a great king nor a good 
king ; but we may assent to Duclos' last words — he was a king. 

Louis XI. had by the queen, his wife, Charlotte of Savoy, six chil- Family of 
dren ; three of them survived him : Charles VIII., his successor ; ■'^•""•^ ^^" 
Anne, his eldest daughter, who had espoused Peter of Bourbon, sire 
de Beaujeu ; and Joan, whom he had married to the duke of Orleans, 
who became Louis XII. At their father's death, Charles was 
thirteen ; Anne twenty-two or twenty- three ; and Joan nineteen. 
According to Charles Y.'s decree, which had fixed fourteen as the 
age for the king's majority, Charles VIII., on his accession, was 
very nearly a major ; but Louis XL, with good reason, considered 
him very far from capable of reigning as yet. On the other hand, 
he had a very high opinion of his daughter Anne, and ' it was to 
her far more than to sire de Beaujeu, her husband, that six days 
before his death and by his last instructions he entrusted the 
guardianship of his son, to whom he already gave the title of Tting, 
and the government of the realm. Louis, duke of Orleans, was a 
natural claimant to the regency ; but Anne de Beaujeu, imme- 
diately and without consulting anybody, took up the position 
which had been entrusted to her by her father, and the fact was 
accepted without ceasing to be questioned. Louis XL had not been 
mistaken in his choice ; there was none more fitj;ed than his 
daughter Anne to continue his policy under the reign and in the 
name of his successor. 

She began by acts of intelligent discretion. She tried, not to Regency of 
subdue by force the rivals and malcontents, but to put them in the Madame de 
wrong in the eyes of the public and to cause embarrassment ^^"J®'^- 
to themselves by treating them with fearless favour. Her brother- 
in-law, the duke of Bourbon, was vexed at being only in appear- 
ance and name the head of his own house ; and she made him 
constable of France and lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The 
friends of Duke Louis of Orleans, amongst others his chief confi- 



2lS History of France. 

dant George of Amboise, bishop of Montauban, and Count Dunois, 
son of Charles VII.'s hero, persistently supported the duke's rights 
to the regency ; and Madame (the title Anne de Beaujeu had 
assumed) made Duke Louis governor of Ile-de-France and of Cham- 
Herenergy pagne and sent Dunois as governor to Dauphiny. She kept those 
tialit^^*'^' ^^ I^o'^is XL's advisers for whom the public had not conceived a 
perfect hatred like that felt for their master; and Commynes alone 
was set aside, as having received from the late king too many 
personal favours and as having too much inclination towards 
independent criticism of the new regency. Two of Louis XL's 
subordinate and detested servants, Oliver le Daim and John Doyac, 
were prosecuted, and one was hanged and the other banished; 
and his doctor, James Coattier, was condemned to disgorge fifty 
thousand crowns out of the enormous presents he had received 
from his patient. At the same time that she thus gave some 
satisfaction to the cravings of popular wrath, Anne de Beaujeu 
threw open the prisons, recalled exiles, forgave the people a 
quarter of the talliage, cut down expenses by dismissing six 
thousand Swiss whom the late king had taken into his pay, re-esta- 
blished some sort of order in the administation of the domains of 
the crcwn, and, in fine, whether in general measures or in respect 
of persons, displayed impartiality without paying court and firmness 
without using severity. 

Anne's discretion was soon put to a great trial. A general cry 

was raised for the convocation of the states-general. The ambitious 

hoped thus to open a road to power ; the public looked forward to it 

for a return to legalized government. No doubt Anne would have 

preferred to remain more free and less responsible in the exercise of 

her authority ; for it was still very far from the time when national 

assemblies could be considered as a permanent power and a regular 

means of government. But Anne and her advisers did not waver; 

they were too wise and too weak to oppose a great public wish. 

The states-general were convoked at Tours for the 5th of January, 

A.D. 1484. 1484. The deputies had all at heart one and the same idea ; they 

The States- (jggjj.g(j ^q \;\xra. the old and undisputed monarchy into a legalized 

convoked and free government. Clergy, nobles, and third estate, there was 

at Tours. ^^^^ y^ ^^^ of their minds any revolutionary yearning or any thought 

of social war. It is the peculiar and the beautiful characteristic of 

the states-general of 1484 that they had an eye to nothing but 

a great political reform, a regimen of legality and freedom. 

Two men, one a Norman and the other a Burgundian, the canon 
JohnMasselin and Philip Pot, lord of la Eoche, a former counsellor 
of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, were the exponents oi this 



The States-general. 219 

political spirit, at once bold and prudent, conservative and reforma- 
tive. The nation's sovereignty and the right of the estates not only 
to vote imposts but to exercise a real influence over the choice and 
conduct of the officers of the crown, this was what they affirmed 
in principle and what in fact they laboured to get established. They 
voted the taxes for a period of two years, declared that at the end 
of that interval they would meet again as a matter of course, and 
separated only after having passed re-*olutions of the boldest 
character. 

^Neither Masselin nor his descendants for more than three cen- ^'^"'^ '^' 

suits* 
turies were destined to see the labours of the states-general of 1484 

obtain substantial and durable results. The work they had con- 
ceived and attempted was premature. The establishment of a free 
government demands either spontaneous and simple virtues such 
as may be found in a young and small community, or the lights, 
the scientific method, and the wisdom, painfully acquired and still 
so imperfect, of great and civilized nations. France of the fifteenth 
century was in neither of these conditions. But it is a crown of 
glory to have felt that honest and patriotic ambition which animated 
Masselin and his friends at their exodus from the corrupt and cor- 
rupting despotism of Louis XL Who would dare to say that their 
attempt, vain as it was for them, was so also for generations sepa- 
rated from them by centuries % Time and space are as nothing in 
the mysterious develoj)ment of God's designs towards men, and it 
is the privilege of mankind to get instruction and example from far- 
off memories of their own history. It was a duty to render to the 
states-general of 1484 the homage to which they have a right by 
reason of their intentions and their efforts on behalf of the good 
cause and in spite of their unsuccess. 

When the states-general had separated, Anne de Beaujeu, with- Ambition 
Out difficulty or uproar, resumed, as she had assumed on her father's "I n'lea^^ 
death, the government of France ; and she kept it yet for seven 
years, from 1484 to 1491. During all this time she had a rival 
and foe in Louis, duke of Orleans, who was one day to be 
Louis XIL This ambitious prince induced Francois II., duke of 
Brittany, Eichard III., king of England, Maximilian of Austria, 
and others to take up arms against the regent. She vanquished 
Francois at IsTantes, and sent to the gallows Landais, minister of 
that prince, and the original instigator of the league. In order 
to divert the attention of Eichard III., she gave her support to 
Henry Tudor, who ultimately gained the battle of Bosworth (1485) 
and ascended to the throne of England, under the title of Henry VII. 
To Maximilian she opposed with success the marshals d'Esquordea 



220 



History of France. 



A.D 1488. 
Battle of 
St. Aubiu- 
du-Cormier 
(July 23;. 



and De Gie. Tlie foolish, war, thus called on account of the pre- 
cipitation with which it had been undertaken, came to an issue 
as speedily as it was unexpected. The counts of Albret and of 
Comminges had espoused the cause of the duke of Orleans : they 
were defeated on their own domains in the South of France. In 
July, 1488, Louis de la Tremoille came suddenly down upon 
Brittany, took one after the other Chateaub riant, Ancenis, and 
Fougeres, and, on the 28th, gained at St. Aubin-du-Cormier, near 
Eennes, over the army of the duke of Brittany and his English, 
German, and Gascon allies, a victory which decided the campaign : 
six thousand of the Breton army were killed, and Duke Louis of 
Orleans, the prince of Orange and several French lords, his friends, 
were made prisoners. 

It was a great success for Anne de Beaujeu. She had beaten 
her united foes. Two incidents that supervened, one a little before 
and the other a little after the battle of St. Aubin-du-Cormier, 
occurred to both embarrass the position, and at the same time call 
forth all the energy of Anne. Her brother-in-law, Duke John of 
Bourbon, the head of his house, died on. the 1st of April, 1488, 
leaving to his younger brother, Peter, his title and domains. 
Having thus become duchess of Bourbon, and being well content 
with this elevation in rank and fortune, Madame the Great (as 
Anne de Beaujeu M^as popularly called) was somewhat less eagerly 
occupied with the business of the realm, was less constant at the 
king's council, and went occasionally with her husband to stay 
awhile in their own territories. Charles VIIL, moreover, having 
nearly arrived at man's estate, made more frequent manifestations 
of his own personal will ; and Anne, clear-sighted and discreet 
though ambitious, was little by little changing her dominion into 
influence. But some weeks after the battle of St, Aubin-du- 
Cormier, on the 7th or 9th of September, 1488, the death of 
Francis II., duke of Brittany, rendered the active intervention of 
the duchess of Bourbon natural and necessary : for he left his 
daughter, the Princess Anne, barely eighteen years old, exposed to 
all the difficulties attendant upon the government of her inherit- 
ance and to all the intrigues of the claimants to her hand. The 
count of Nassau, having arrived in Brittany with the proxy of 
Archduke Maximilian, had by a mock ceremony espoused the 
Breton princess in his master's name, Madame de Beaujeu imme- 
diately sent into Brittany a powerful army, and compelled the young 
heiress to bestow herself upon the suzerain, Charles VITI, The 
young princess Marguerite of Austria, who had for eight years 
been under guardianship and education at Amboise as the future 



Marriage of Charles VIII. — Its results. 22 i 

wife of the king of France, was removed from France and takeu 

back into Flanders to her father Archduke Maximilian with all the 

external honours that could alleviate such an insult. On the 7th 

of February, 1492, Anne was crowned at St. Denis ; and next day, 

the 8th of February, she made her entry in state into Paris amidst 

the joyful and earnest acclamations of the public. A sensible and 

a legitimate joy : for the reunion of Brittany to France was the Brittany ■ 

consolidation of the peace which, in this same century, on the 17th reunited to 

of September, 1453, had put an end to the Hundred Years' War ''^°" ' 

between France and England, and was the greatest act that 

remained to be accomplished to insure the definitive victory and 

the territorial constitution of French nationality. 

Charles VITI. was pleased with and proud of himself. He had 
achieved a brilliant and a difficult marriage. In Europe and within 
his own household he had made a display of power aiid independence. 
In order to espouse Anne of Brittany he had sent back Marguerite 
of Austria to her father. He had gone in person and withdrawn 
from prison his cousin Louis of Orleans, whom his sister Anne de 
Beaujeu had put there ; and so far from having got embroiled with 
her he saw all the royal family reconciled around him. This was 
no little success for a young prince of twenty-one. He thereupon 
devoted himself with ardour and confidence to his desire of winning 
back the kingdom of !N"aples which Alphonso L, king of Arragon, 
had wrested from the House of France, and of thereby re-opening 
for himself in the East and against Islamry that career of Christian 
glory which had made a saint of his ancestor Louis IX. By two 
treaties concluded in 1493 [one at Barcelona on the 19th of January 
and the other at Senlis on the 23rd of May], he gave up Eoussillon 
and Cerdagne to Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Arragon, and 
Franche-Comte, Artois and Charolais to the House of Austria, and, 
after having at such a lamentable price purchased freedom of move- 
ment, he went and took up his quarters at Lyons to prepare for his 
^Neapolitan venture. 

It were out of place to follow out here in all its details a war „. . ^ 
which belongs to the history of Italy far more than to that of Italy. 
France ; it will suffice to point out with precision the positions of 
the principal Italian States at this period, and the different shares 
of influence they exercised on the fate of the Fi'ench expedition. 

Six principal States, Piedmont, the kingdom of the dukes of 
Savoy ; the duchy of Milan ; the republic of Venice ; the republic 
of Florence ; Rome and the pope ; and the kingdom of I^aplea, 
co-existed in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. In August, 
1404, when Charles VIII. started from Lyons on his Italian expe- 



222 History of France. 

dition, Piedmont was governed by Blanche of Montferrat, widow 

of Charles the Warrior, duke of Savoy, in the name of her son 

Charles John Aniadeo, a child only six years old. In the duchy of 

Milan the power was in the hands of Ludovic Sforza, called 

the Moor, who, being ambitious, faithless, lawless, unscrupulous, 

employed it in banishing to Pavia the lawful duke, his own nephew, 

Its rulers John Galeas Mario Sforza, of whom the Florentine ambassador 

temporal ^^^^ ^^ Ludovic himself, " This young man seems to me a good 
and spin- . ' . . 

tual. yoiii'^g man, and animated by good sentiments, but very deficient 

in wits." He was destined to die ere long, probably by poison. 

The republic of Venice had at this period for its doge Augustin 

Barbarigo ; and it was to the council of Ten that in respect of 

foreign affairs as well as of the home department the power really 

belonged. Peter de' Medici, son of Lorenzo de' Medeci, the father 

of the Muses, was feebly and stupidly, though with all the airs and 

pretensions of a despot, governing the republic of Florence, Eome 

had for pope Alexander VI. (Roderigo Borgia), a prince who was 

covetous, licentious, and brazen-facedly fickle and disloyal in his 

policy, and who would be regarded as one of the most utterly 

demoralized men of the fifteenth century only that he had for son 

a Csesar Borgia. Finally at Naples, in 1494, three months before 

the day on which Charles VIII. entered Italy, King Alphonso II. 

ascended the throne. " 'So man," says (Jommynes, " was ever 

more cruel than he, or more wicked, or more vicious and tainted, or 

more gluttonous." Such, in Italy, whether in her kingdoms or her 

republics, were the Heads with whom Charles VIII. had to deal 

when he went, in the name of a disputed right, three hundred 

leagues away from his own kingdom in quest of a bootless and 

ephemeral conquest. 

Italian On his way to Italy, Charles VIII. had stopped at Lyons, and 

o^^'ciiarles ^^^^re he spent so much money in rejoicings that he was obliged to 

VIU. contract a loan before he could proceed with his undertaking. He 

conducted his array through Vienne (Dauphine), Gap, the passage 

of mount Genevre and Susa as far as Asti, where he was detained by 

a serious illness. His fleet, under the command of the Duke of 

Orleans, gained at the same time a victory over the Neapolitans at 

Rapalto, near Genoa. From Asti, where he received the visit of 

Ludovic Sforza, Charles VIII. went to Placentia, and there he 

learnt both the deaths of the duke of Milan and the anticipated 

usurpation of the young prince's guardian. He then crossed the 

Apenuine pass of Pontemoli which had been left defenceless, and 

entered Tuscany, delivering Pisa from the yoke of the Florentines, 

and respecting, in this last named city, the intrepidity of Pietro 



Charles VIII. in Italy, 223 

Capponi and the inhabitants, who had risen to maintain their free- 
dom. " Sound your trumpets," said they to the French, "we will 
ring our bells." 

On the 1st of January, 1495, Charles VIII. entered Eome with A.D. 1493, 

. Charles 

his army ; the pope having retired at first to the Vatican and ym^ 

afterwards to the castle of St. Angelo, and Charles remaining enters 

master of the city, which, in a fit of mutual ill-humour and mis- ij^-\\ 

trust, was for one day given over to pillage and the violence of the 

soldiery. At last, on the 15th of January, a treaty was concluded 

which regulated pacific relations between the two sovereigns, and 

secured to the French army a free passage through the States of 

the Church, both going to Naples and also returning, and 

provisional possession of the town of Civita Yecchia, on condition 

that it should be restored to the pope when the king returned to 

France. It was announced that, on the 23rd of January, the 

Arragonese king of Naples, Alphonso II., had abdicated in favour 

of his son, Ferdinand II.; and, on the 28th of January, Charles YIII. 

took solemn leave of the pope, received his blessing, and left 

Rome, as he had entered it, at the head of his army, and more 

confident than ever in the success of the expedition he was going 

to carry out. 

After such a beginning, the Italian campaign promised to be 
merely a brilliant military promenade, where the only trouble would 
be that necessitated by appointing every day the quarters for the 
troops. There was indeed the semblance of a fight at San-Germano, 
but the king of Naples, betrayed both by his army and by his 
subjects, was obliged to seek safety in the island of Ischia, from 
whence he reached Sicily. Charles YIII. entered Naples on the and 
22nd of February at the head of his troops, on horseback beneath Naples 
a pall of cloth of gold borne by four great Neapolitan lords, and ^ • /• 
" received," says Guicciardini, " with cheers and a joy of which it 
would be vain to attempt a description ; the incredible exultation 
of a crowd of both sexes, of every age, of every condition, of every 
quality, of every party, as if he had been the father and first founder 
of the city." 

At the news hereof the disquietude and vexation of the principal A.D. 1495, 

Italian powers were displayed at Yenice as well as at Milan and at J-^f^g^® 
^ ^ '> between 

Eome ; on the 31st of March, 1495, a league was concluded between the Pope, 

Pope Alexander YI. Emperor Maximilian I., as king of the Eomans, t^® ^°V 

the king of Spain, the Yenetians, and the duke of Milan : " To three Spaniards 

ends," saysCommynes,"for to defend Christendom against the Turks, tj^e Vene- 

for the defence of Italy, and for the preservation of their estates, Milanese ) 

There was nothing in it against the king, they told me, but it was to (March 31 



224 History of France. 

secure themselves from him ; they did not like his so deluding the 
world with words by saying that all he wanted was the kingdom 
and then to march against the Turk, and all the while he was 
showing quite the contrary." Charles VIII. remained nearly two 
months at Kaples after the ItaHan league had been concluded, and 
whilst it was making its preparations against him was solely con- 
cerned about enjoying, in his beautiful but precarious kingdom, 
" all sorts of mundane pleasaunces," as his councillor, the cardinal 
of St. Malo, says, and giving entertainments to his new subjects, 
as much disposed as himself to forget every thing in amusement. 
On the 12th of May, 1495, all the population of Naples and of the 
neighbouring country was a-foot early to see their new king make 
his entry in state as Mng of Naples, Sicily and Jerusalem, with his 
Neapolitan court and his French troops ; and only a week afterwards, 
Retreat of on the 20th of May, 1495, Charles VIII. started from Naples to 
m Im I'sturn to France with an army at the most from twelve to fifteen 
thousand strong, leaving for guardian of his new kingdom his cousin 
Gilbert of Bourbon, count de Montpensier, a brave but indolent 
knight, (who never rose, it was said, until noon,) with eight or ten 
thousand men, scattered for the most part throughout the provinces. 
During the months of April and May, thus wasted by Charles 
VIII., the Italian league, and especially the Venetians and the 
duke of Milan, Ludovic the Moor, had vigorously pushed for- 
ward their preparations for war, and had already collected an 
army more numerous than that with which the king of France, in 
order to return home, would have to traverse the whole of Italy, 
He took more than six weeks to traverse it, passing three days at 
Eome, four at Siena, the same number at Pisa, and three at Lucca, 
though he had declared that he would not halt anywhere. He 
evaded entering Florence, where he had made promises which he 
could neither retract nor fulfil. It was in the duchy of Parma, 
near the town of Fornovo, on the right bank of the Taro, an affluent 
of the Po, that the French and Italian armies met, on the 5th of 
A.D. 1495. July, 1495. The French army was nine or ten thousand strong, 
Fornovo with five or six thousand camp-followers, servants or drivers ; the 
(July 5). Italian army numbered at least thirty thouoand men, well supplied 
and well rested, whereas the French were fatigued with their long 
march and very badly ofi" for supplies. The battle was very hotly 
contested, hut did not last long, Avith alternations of success and 
reverse on both sides. The two principal commanders in the king's 
army, Louis de la Tremoille and John James Trivulzio, sustained 
without recoiling the shock of troops far more numerous than 
their own. 



Battle of Fornovo. 225 

Botli armies might and did claim the victory, for they had, each 
of them, partly succeeded in their design. The Itahans wished to 
unmistakably drive out of Italy Charles VIII., who was withdrawing 
voluntarily \ but to make it an unmistakable retreat, he ought to 
have been defeated, his army beaten, and himself perhaps a Its results, 
prisoner. With that view they attempted to bar his passage and 
beat him on Italian ground : in that they failed ; Charles, remain- 
ing master of the battle-field, went on his way in freedom and 
covered with glory, he and his army. He certainly left Italy, bnt 
he left it with the feeling of superiority in arms, and with the 
intention of returning thither better iuformed and better supplied. 
The Italian allies were triumphant, butwithout any ground of security 
or any lustre ; the expedition of Charles VIII. was plainly only the 
beginning of the foreigner's ambitious projects, invasions and wars 
against their own beautiful land. The king of France and his men 
of war had not succeeded in conquering it, but they had been 
charmed with such an abode ; they had displayed in their cam- 
paign knightly qualities more brilliant and more masterful than the 
studied duplicity and elegant effeminacy of the Italians of the 
fifteenth century, and, after the battle of Fornovo, they returned to 
France justly proud and foolishly confident notwithstanding the 
incompleteness of their success. 

Cliarles VIII. reigned for nearly three years longer after his Ii^tter 
return to his kingdom ; and for the first two of them he passed his charles 
time in indolently dreaming of his plans for a fresh invasion of VIII. 
Italy, and in frivolous abandonment to his pleasures and the enter- 
tainments at his court, which he moved about from Lyons to 
Moulins, to Paris, to Tours and to Amboise. The news which 
came to him from Italy was worse and worse every day. The 
count de Montpensier, whom he had left at JS^aples, could not hold 
his own there, and died a prisoner on the 11th of IS'ovember, 

1496, after having found himself driven from place to place by 
Ferdinand II., who by degrees recovered possession of nearly all 
his kingdom, merely, himself also, to die there on the 6th of 
October, leaving for his uncle and successor, Frederick III., the 
honour of recovering the last four places held by the French. 
Whilst still constantly talking of the war he had in view, Charbs 
attended more often and more earnestly than he hitherto had done, to 
the internal affairs of his kingdom. His two immediate predecessors, 
Charles VII. and Louis XL had decreed the collation and revision 
of local customs, so often the rule of civil jurisdiction; but the work 
made no progress ; Charles VIII. by a decree dated March 15, 

1497, abridged the formalities, and urged on the execution of it, 



226 History of France. 

though it was not completed until the reign of Charles IX. By 
another decree, dated August 2, 1497, he organized and regulated, 
as to its powers as well as its composition, the king's grand council, 
the supreme administrative body which was a fixture at Paris. At 
A.D. 1498. the beginning of the year 1498, Charles VIII. was at Amboise, 
Charles where considerable works had been begun under his direction by 
VIII. several excellent artists whom he had brought from ^Naples. When 

passing one day through a dark gallery, he knocked his forehead 
against a door with such violence that he died a few hours after- 
wards (April 7, 1498). He was only twenty-eight years old ; 
■Commines has said of him : " He had little understanding, but he 
was so good that it would have been impossible to find a kinder 
creature." With him the direct family of Valois became extinct, 
and was replaced by that of the Valois-Orleans. Under the reign 
of Charles VIII. the cultivation of the mulberry tree was first 
introduced into France ; the earliest plantations were attempted in 
the neighbourhood of Montelimar with complete success. 
louis XII. On ascending the throne Louis XII. reduced the public taxes 
Tjolicv^of * ^^^ confirmed in their posts his predecessor's chief advisers, using 
his prede- to Louis de la Tremoille, wh.o had been one of his most energetic 
essor. £Qgg^ ^^^^ celebrated expression, " The king of France avenges not 
the wrongs of the duke of Orleans." At tlie same time on the day 
of his coronation at Rheims [May 27, 1492], he assumed, besides 
his title of king of France, the titles of Mng of Naples and of 
Jei"usalem and dulce of Milan. This was as much as to say that he 
would pursue a pacific and conservative policy at home, and a 
warlike and adventurous policy abroad. And, indeed, his govern- 
ment did present these two phases so different and inharmonious. 
By his policy at home, Louis XII. deserved and obtained the name 
of Father of the People ; by his enterprises and wars abroad, he 
involved France still more deeply than Charles VIII. had in that 
mad course of distant, reckless, and incoherent conquests for which 
his successor, Francis I., was destined to pay by capture at Pavia 
and by the lamentable treaty of Madrid, in 1526, as the price of 
his release. Let us follow these two portions of Louis XII. 's reign, 
each separately, without mixing up one with the other by reason 
of identity of dates. We shall thus get at a better understanding 
and better appreciation of their character and their results. 
Claims Outside of France Milaness [the Milanese district] was Louis 

1 ^^®ss xjj's gi-st thought, at his accession, and the first object of his 
patrimcny. desire. He looked upon it as his patrimony. His grandmother, 
V^alentine Visconti, widow of that duke of Orleans who had been 
assassinated at Paris in 1407 by order of John the Fearless, didce 




LOUIS xn. 



First Invasion of Italy. 227 

of Burgundy, had been the last to inherit the duchy of Milan which 
the Sforzas, in 1450, had seized. When Charles VIII. invaded 
Italy in 1494, "JSTow is the time," said Louis, "to enforce the . 
rights of Valentine Visconti, my grandmother, to Milaness." And 
he, in fact, asserted them openly, and proclaimed his intention of 
vindicating them so soon as he found the moment propitious. 
Accordingly, in the month of August, 1499, the French army, with 
a strength of from twenty to five and twenty thousand men, of 
whom five thousand were Swiss, invaded Milaness. Duke Ludo- ^ j) 1499 
vie Sforza opposed to it a force pretty nearly equal in number, but TheFrencli 
far less full of confidence and of far less valour. In less than three j* j^j„ 
weeks the duchy was conquered ; in only two cases was any assault 
necessary ; all the other places were given up by traitors or surren- 
dered without show of resistance. On the 6th of October, 1499, Their first 
Louis made his triumphal entry into Milan amidst cries of "Hurrah ! successes, 
for France." He reduced the heavy imposts established by the 
Sforzas, revoked the vexatious game-laws, instituted at Milan a 
court of justice analogous to the French parliaments, loaded with 
favours the scholars and artists who were the honour of Lombardy, 
and recrossed the Alps at the end of some weeks, leaving as 
governor of Milaness John James Trivulzio, the valiant Condottiere, 
who, four years before, had quitted the service of Ferdinand II., 
king of Naples, for that of Charles YIII. Unfortunately Trivulzio 
was himself a Milanese, and of the faction of the Guelphs; He 
had the passions of a partisan, and the habits of a man of war, and 
he soon became as tyrannical, and as mucli detested in Milaness as 
Ludovic the Moor had but lately been, A plot was formed in 
favour of the fallen tyrant, who was in Germany expecting it, and 
was recruiting, during expectancy, amongst the Germans and Swiss 
in order to take advantage of it. On the 25th of January 1500, A.D, 1500. 
the insurrection broke out ; and two months later Ludovic Sforza ^q^^^^*~ 
had once more become master of Milaness, where the French Milan 
possessed nothing but the castle of Milan. ^''^*^- * )* 

Louis XII., so soon as he heard of the Milanese insurrection, 
sent into Italy Louis de la Tremoille, the best of his captains, and 
the cardinal d'Amboise, his privy councillor and his friend ; the 
former to command the royal troops, French and Swiss, and the 
latter " for to treat about the reconciliation of the rebel towns, and 
to deal with everything as if it were the king in his own person," 
The campaign did not last long. The Swiss who had been recruited 
by Ludovic and those who were in Louis XII. 's service had no 
mind to fight one another ; and the former capitulated, siirrendered 
the strong p^aco of Novara, and promised to evacuate the country 

Q 2 



22 S History of France. 

on condition of a safe-conduct for themselves and tlieir booty. 
Betrayed into the hands of the enemy, Ludovic was sent to Prance 
wliere he expired fourteen years after, a prisoner in the castle of 
Loches. The duchy of Milan then submitted to Loi\is XII., and 
this prince made immediate preparations for attacking Naples. 
"With this view he signed with Ferdinand the Catholic the secret 
treaty of Granada (Nov. 11, 1500). 

On hearing of the approach of the French, the new king Frederic 
requested the Spaniards to defend him, and gave over to them his 
fortresses : this was surrendering to the enemy. Dethroned with- 
out having fought, and made a prisoner in the island of Ischia, he 
was conducted first to Blois, and then to Tours, whilst his son was 
confined in Spain. He was at least avenged by the disunion which 
took place between his enemies. Gonzalvo of Cordova, one of the 
most celebrated chieftains of the day, attempted to defend Barletta, 
but would have been compelled to surrender, had not the treaty of 
Lyons, by apparently bringing about a cessation of hostilities, 
permitted the treacherous Ferdinand to succour his general. The 
TheFrench French suffered, in consequence, two defeats (Seminara, Cerignola), 
e bated at ^^^^ Yq^^ nearly all their possessions in the kingdom of Naples (1503). 
and Louis XII. hasted to levy and send to Italy, under the command 

Cerignola, ^f Louis de la Tremoille, a fresh army for the purpose of relieving 
Gaeta and recovering Naples ; but at Parma La Tremoille fell ill, 
and the command devolved upon the Marquis of Mantua, who 
A.D. 1603. marched on Gaeta. He found Gonzalvo of Cordova posted with 
th^ Garie- ^^^ army on the left bank of the Garigliano, either to invest the 
liano place or to repulse reinforcements that might arrive for it. The 

(Dec. 37). ^^Q armies passed fifty days face to face almost, with the river and 
its marshes between them, and vainly attempting over and over 
again to join battle. At length the French were defeated, and 
Gaeta fell into the hands of the Spaniards on the 1st of January, 
1504. 

At the news of these reverses the grief and irritation of Louis 
XII. were extreme. Not only was he losing his Neapolitan con- 
quest, but even his Milanese was also threatened. The ill-will of 
the Yenetians became manifest. The determined prosecution of 
hostilities in the kingdom of Naples by Gonzalvo of Cordova, in 
spite of the treaty concluded at Lyons on the 5th of April, 1503, 
between the kings of Prance and Spain, was so much the more offen- 
sive to Louis XII. in thot this treaty was the consequence and the 
confirmation of an enormous concession which he had, two years 
previously, made to the king of Spain on consenting to affiance his 
daughter, Princess Claude of Prance, two years old, to Ferdinand's 



France nearly dismembered by its king. 229 

grandaon, Charles of Austria, whc was then only one year old, and 
who became Charles the Fifth (emperor) ! Lastly, about the same 
time. Pope Alexander VI., who, willy nilly, had rendered Louis . 
XIL so many services, died at Eome on the 12th of August, 1503. 
Louis had hoped that his favourite minister. Cardinal George 
dAmboise, would succeed him, and that hope had a great deal to 
do with the shocking favour he showed Caesar Borgia, that infa- 
mous son, of a demoralized father. But the candidature of Cardinal 
d'Amboise failed ; a four weeks' pope, Pius III., succeeded Alex- 
ander VI. ; and, when the Holy See suddenly became once more 
vacant, Cardinal d'Amboise failed again ; and the new choice was 
Cardinal Julian della Eovera, Pope Julius II., who soon became 
the most determined and most dangerous foe of Louis XIL, already 
assailed by so many enemies. 

In order to put off the struggle which had succeeded so ill for £-^" ^^9*: 
^ . Truce with 

nim in the kingdom of l^aples, Louis concluded on the 31st of Spain. 

March, 1604, a truce for three years with the king of Spain ; and 

on. the 22nd of September, in the same year, in order to satisfy his 

grudge on account of the Venetians' demeanour towards him, he 

made an alliance against them with Emperor Maximilian I. and 

Pope Julius II., with the design, all three of them, of wresting 

certain provinces from them. With those political miscalculations 

was connected a more personal and more disinterested feeling. 

Louis repented of having in 1501, under the influence of his wife, 

Anne of Brittany, affianced his daughter Claude to Prince Charles 

of Austria, and of the enormous concessions he had made by two 

treaties, one of April 5, 1503, and the other of September 22, 1504, 

for the sake of this marriage. He had assigned as dowry to his 

daughter, first the duchy of Milan, then the kingdom of Naples, 

then Brittany, and then the duchy of Burgundy and the countship 

of Blois. The latter of these treaties contained even the followino- 

strange clause : " If, by default of the Most Christian king or of 

the queen his wife, or of the Princess Claude, the aforesaid marriage I^ismem 

llfiTttlPTlt" 

should not take place, the Most Christian king doth will and ^f France 
consent, from now, that the said duchies of Burgundy and Milan 
and the countship of Asti, do remain settled upon the said Prince 
Charles, duke of L xe ubourg, with all the rights therein possessed 
or possibly to be possessed by the Most Christian king." [Corps 
Diplomatique du Droit des Gens, by J. Dumont, t. iv. part i. p. 57.] 
It was dismembering France and at the same time settling on aU 
her frontiers, to east, west, and south-west, as well as to north and 
south, a power which the approaching union of two crowns, the 
imperial and the Spanish, on the head of Prince Charles of Austria 
rendered so preponderating and so formidable. 



2.^0 



Histoiy of France. 



A.D. 1506. 

Annulled 
by the 
States- 
general. 



A.D. 1506 
—1511. 

Summary 
of the 
Italian 
war. 



The states -general were convoked and met at Tours (1506) for 
the purpose of deliberating upon so important a step : the nation 
protested, through the voice of George d'Amhoise, against the poli- 
tical arrangements made by Anne of Brittany, and the king seized 
the earliest opportunity of annulling by force what he would never 
have consented to, had the suggestion been offered to him whilst 
he was in the enjoyment of his usual health. 

Whatever displeasure must have been caused to the emperor of 
Germany and to the king of Spain by this resolution on the part of 
Prance and her king, it did not show itself either in acts of hos- 
tility, or even in complaints of a more or less threatening kind. Italy 
remained for some years longer the sole theatre of rivalry and strife 
between these three great powers ; and, during this strife, the utter 
diversity of the combinations, whether in the way of alliance or of 
rupture, bore witness to the extreme changeability of the interests, 
passions, and designs of the actors. From 1506 to 1515, between 
Louis XII.'s will and his death, we find in the history of his 
career in Italy five coalitions and as many great battles of a pro- 
foundly contradictory character. In 1508, Pope Julius II., Louis 
XII., Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic, king of 
Spain, form together against the Venetians the League of Cambrai. 
In 1510, Julius IL, Ferdinand, the Venetians, and the Swiss make 
a coalition against Louis XII. In 1512, this coalition, decomposed 
for a while, re-unites, under the name of the League of the Holy 
Union, between the pope, the Venetians, the Swiss, and the kings 
of Arragon and ^Naples against Louis XII., minus the Emperor 
Maximilian ojiAplus Henry VIII., king of England. On the 14th 
of May, 1509, Louis XII., in the name of the League of Cambrai, 
gains the battle of Agnadello against the Venetians. On the 11th 
of April, 1512, it is against Pope Julius II. , Ferdinand the Catholic, 
and the Venetians that he gains the battle of Eavenna. On the 
14th of March, 1513, he is in alliance with the Venetians, and it 
is against the Swiss that he loses the battle of No vara. In 1510, 
1511, and 1512, in the course of all these incessant changes of 
political allies and adversaries, three councils met at Tours, at Pisa, 
and at St. John Lateran, with views still more discordant and 
irreconcilable than those of all these laic coalitions. We merely 
point out here the principal traits of the nascent sixteenth century; 
we have no intention of tracing with a certain amount of detail any 
incidents but those that refer to Louis XII. and to France, to their 
procedure and their fortunes. 

Jealousy, ambition, secret resentment, and the prospect of 
despoiling them caused the formation of the League of Camhrai 
against the Venetians. Independently of their natural haughtiness 



Battle of Agnadello* 23 1 

the Venetians were puffed up with, the advantages they had ob- 
tained in a separate campaign against the Emperor Maximilian, and 
flattered themselves that they would manage to conquer one after 
the other, or to split up, or to tire out their enemies ; and they pre- 
pared energetically for war. Louis XII., on his side, got together The Vene- 
an army with a strength of 2300 lances (about 13,000 mounted attacke^d 
troops), 10,000 to 12,000 French foot and 6000 or 8000 Swiss. 
One of his most distinguished officers was the celebrated Bayard, 
whose courage and high sense of honour merited for him the title of 
Chevalier satis peur et sans reproche. 

On the Uth of May, 1509, the French and the Venetians A.D. 1509. 
encountered near the village of Agnadello, in the province of Lodi, AenadeUo 
on the banks of the Adda. Louis XII. commanded his army in person, (May 14) . 
with Louis de la Tremoille and James Trivulzio for his principal 
lieutenants : the Venetians were under the orders of two generals, 
the count of Petigliano and Barthelemy d'Alviano, both members 
of the Eoman family of the Orsini, but not on good terms with one 
another. The great blow fell upon the Venetians' infantry, which 
lost, according to some, eight thousand men ; others say that the 
number of dead on both sides did not amount to more than six 
thousand. The territorial results of the victory were greater than 
the numerical losses of the armies. Within a fortnight the towns 
of Caravaggio, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, Cremona and Pizzighi- 
tone surrendered to the French. Peschiera alone, a strong fortress 
at the southern extremity of the Lake of Garda, resisted and was 
carried by assault. 

Louis, so gentle at home, behaved barbarously in Italy ; he put 

to the sword every garrison which dared to hold out against his 

forces, and sent to the gallows every peasant who cried "San 

Marco 1 " In this extremity, the republic saved itself by an act of 

wisdom which was at the same time a masterpiece of calculation. 

They withdrew their troops from all the cities on the mainland, 

and released their subjects from their oath of allegiance. These, no 

longer constrained to fidelity, made it a point of honoar to remain 

spontaneously faithful. Concentrated between its own walls and 

safe by its inexpregnable position in the midst of the sea, Venice 

waited patiently for discord to break out amongst the confederates. 

This soon came to pass. Louis XII. committed the mistake of Political 

embroiling himself with the Swiss by refusing to add 20,000 ^i^^'^^rs 
o -^ " ' of Louis 

livres to the pay of 60,000 he was giving them already, and by XII. 

styling them "wretched mountain-shepherds who presumed to 

impose upon him a tax he was not disposed to submit to." The 

pope conferred the investiture of the kingdom of ifaples upon 



232 History of France. 

Ferdinand tie Catholic, who at first promised only his neutrality, 
but could not fail to be drawn in still further when war was 
rekindled in Italy. In all these negotiations with the Venetians, 
the Swiss, the hings of Spain and England and the Emperor Maxi- 
milian, Julius II. took a bold initiative. Maximilian alone remained 
for some time at peace with the king of France. In October, 1511, 
a league was formally concluded between the pope, the Venetians, 
the Swiss and King Ferdinand against Louis XII. A place was 
reserved in it for the king of England, Henry VIII., who, on 
ascending the throne, had sent word to the king of France that "he 
desired to abide in the same friendship that the king his father 
had kept up," but who, at the bottom of his heart, burned to 
resume on the Continent an active and a prominent pari. The 
coalition thus formed was called the League of Holy Union. " I," 
said Louis XIL, "am the Saracen against whom this league is 
directed." 

He had just lost, a few months previouslj'', the intimate and 

faithful adviser and friend of his whole life ; Cardinal George 

d'Amboise, seized at Milan with a fit of the gout, during which 

Louis tended him with the assiduity and care of an affectionate 

A.D. 1510. "brother, died at Lyons on the 25th of May, 1510, at fifty years of 

•;arc7inal ^8^- He was one, not of the greatest, but of the most honest 

d'Amtoise ministers who ever enjoyed a powerful monarch's constant favour, 

^ ^^ '■ and employed it, we will not say with complete disinterestedness, 

but with a predominant anxiety for the public ' weal. In the 

His cha- matter of external policy the influence of Cardinal d'Amboise was 

racter. neither skilfully nor salutarily exercised : he, like his master, 

indulged in those views of distant, incoherent and improvident 

conquests which caused the reign of Louis XII. to be wasted in 

ceaseless wars, with which the Cardinal's desire of becoming pope 

was not altogether unconnected, and which, after having resulted 

in nothing but reverses, were a heavy heritage for the succeeding 

reign. But at home, in his relations with the king and in his civil 

and religious administration, Cardinal d'Amboise was an earnest 

and effective friend of justice, of sound social order, and of regard 

for morality in the practice of power. ■ It is said that, in his latter 

days, he, virtuously weary of the dignities of this world, said to 

the infirmary-brother who was attending him, " Ah ! Brother 

John, why did I not always remain Brother John !" A pious 

regret, the sincerity and modesty whereof are rare amongst men of 

high estate. 

"At last, then, I am the only pope ! " cried Julius II., when he 
heard that Cardinal d'Amboise was dead. But his joy was mis- 



*^The barbarians mtist be driven from Italy ^^ 233 

placed : the cardinal's death was a great loss to him \ hetween the 
king and the pope the cardinal had been an intelligent mediator 
who understood the two positions and the two characters, and who, 
though most faithful and devoted to the king, had nevertheless a 
place in his heart for the papacy also, and laboured earnestly on 
every occasion to bring about between the two rivals a policy of 
moderation and peace. War was rekindled, or, to speak more cor- 
rectly, resumed its course after the cardinal's death. Julius II. 
plunged into it in person, moving to every point where it was going 
on, living in the midst of camps, himself in military costume, 
besieging towns, having his guns pointed and assaults delivered 
under his own eyes. Men expressed astonishment, not unmixed 
with admiration, at the indomitable energy of this soldier-pope at 
seventy years of age. It was said that he had cast into the Tiber 
the keys of St. Peter to gird on the sword of St. Paul. His answer 
to everything was, "The barbarians must be driven from Italy." 
Louis XII. became more and more irritated and undecided. 

From 1510 to 1512 the war in Italy was thus proceeding, but Gaston de 
with no great results, when Gaston de Foix, duke of Is^emours, j^ander of 
came to take the command of the French army. He was scarcely the French 
twenty-three, and had hitherto only served under Trivulzio and la ^^'^y* 
Palisse ; but he had already a character for bravery and intelli- 
gence in war. Louis XII. loved this son of his sister Mary of 
Orleans, and gladly elevated him to the highest rank. Gaston, 
from the very first, justified this favour. Instead of seeking for 
glory in the field only, he began by shutting himself up in Milan 
which the Swiss were besieging. They made him an offer to take 
the road back to Switzerland, if he would give them a month's 
pay ; the sum was discussed ; Gaston considered that they asked 
too much for their withdrawal; the Swiss broke off the negotia- 
tion ; but " to the great astonishment of everybody," says Guic- 
ciardini, " they raised the siege and returned to their own country." 
The pope was besieging Bologna; Gaston arrived there suddenly 
with a body of troops whom he had marched out at night through 
a tempest of wind and snow ; and he was safe inside the place 
whilst the besiegers were still ignorant of his movement. The 
siege of Bologna was raised. Gaston left it immediately to march 
on Brescia, which the Venetians had taken possession of for the 
Holij League. He retook the town by a vigorous assault, gave it 
up to pillage, punished with death Count Louis Avogaro and his 
two sons, who had excited the inhabitants against France, and 
gave a beating to the Venetian army before its walls. All these 
successes had been gained in a fortnight. " According to imi- 



234 History of France. 

versal opinion," says Guicciardini, *' Italy for several centuries had. 
seen nothing like these military operations." 
i«5io Finally, a decisive battle was fought at Eavenna (April 11th) 

Killed at ' which cost the life of the heroic French commander. When the 

Eavenna fatal news was known, the consternation and grief were profound. 

^ ^ ''At the age of twenty-three Gaston de Foix had in. less than six 
months won the confidence and affection of the army, of the king 
and of France. It was one of those sudden and undisputed repu- 
tations which seem to mark out men for the highest destinies. " I 
would fain," said Louis XII., when he heard of his death, " have 
no longer an inch of land in Italy and be able at that price to bring 
back to life my nephew Gaston and all the gallants who perished 

The domi- with him. God keep us from often gaining such victories ! " La 

nation of Palisse, a warrior valiant and honoured, assumed the command of 

the French . . 

disappears this victorious army ; but under pressure of repeated attacks from 

from Italy, the Spaniards, the Venetians and the Swiss, he gave up first the 
Eomagna, then Milaness, withdrew from place to place, and ended 
by falling back on Piedmont. Julius II. won back all he had 
won and lost. Maximilian Sforza, son of Ludovic the Moor, after 
twelve years of exile in Germany, returned to Milan to resume 
possession of his father's duchy. By the end of June, 1512, less 
than three months after the victory of Eavenna, the domination of 
the French had disappeared from Italy. 

Louis XII. had, indeed, something else to do besides crossing 
the Alps to go to the protection of such precarious conquests. 
Into France itself war was about to make its way ; it was his own 
kingdom and his own country that he had to defend. In vain, 
after the death of Isabella of Castile, had he married his niece, 
Germaine de Foix, to Ferdinand the Catholic, whilst giving up to 
him all pretensions to the kingdom of JSTaples. In 1512 Ferdinand 
invaded Navarre, took possession of the Spanish portion of that 
little kingdom, and thence threatened Gascony. Henry YIII., king 
of England, sent him a fleet, which did not withdraw until after it 
had appeared befofe Bayoiine and thrown the south-west of France 
into a state of alarm. In the north Henry VIII. continued his 
preparations for an expedition into France, obtained from his par- 
liament subsidies for that purpose, and concerted plans with 
Emperor Maximilian, who renounced his doubtful neutrality, and 

The " Holy g]^g3^gg(j himself at last in the Hohj League. Louis XII. had in 
Germany an enemy as zealous almost as Julius II. was in Italy : 
Maximilian's daughter, Princess Marguerite of Austria, had never 
forgiven France or its king, whether he were called Charles VIII. 
or Louis XIL, the treatment she had received from that court 



Death of Pope Julius II. :235 

when, after having been kept there and brought up for eight years 
to become queen of France, she had been sent away, and handed 
back to her father, to make way for Anne of Brittany. She was 
ruler of the Low Countries, active, able, full of passion, and in 
continual correspondence with her father, the emperor, over whom 
she exercised a great deal of influence. The Swiss, on their side, 
continuing to smart under the contemptuous language which Louis 
had imprudently applied to them, 1 ecame more and more pro- 
nounced against him, rudely dismissed Louis de la Tremoille who 
attempted to negotiate with them, re-established Maximilian Sforza 
in the duchy of Milan, and haiightily styled themselves "vanquishers 
of kings and defenders of the holy Eonian Church." And the 
Eoman Church made a good defender of herself. Julius II. had 
convoked at liome, at St. John Lateran, a council, which met on 
the 3rd of May, 1512, and in presence of which the council of Pisa 
and Milan, after an attempt at removing to Lyons, vanished away 
like a phantom. Everywhere things were turning out according to 
the wishes and for the profit of the pope ; and France and her king 
were reduced to defending themselves on their own. soil against a 
coalition of all their great neighbour. 

On the 21st of February, 1513, ten months since Gaston de Foix a..d. 1613. 
the victor of Eavenna, had perished "in the hour of his victory, Deatli of 
Pope Julius II. died at Eome at the very moment when he seemed juij^g u 
invited to enjoy all the triumph of his policy. He died without (Feb. 21). 
bluster and without disquietude, disavowing naught of his past life 
and relinquishing none of his designs as to the futiire. The death, 
of Julius II. seemed to Louis XII. a favourable opportunity for 
once more setting foot in Italy, and recovering at least that which 
he regarded as his hereditary right, the duchy of Milan. He com- State of 
missioned Louis de la Tremoille to go and renew the conquest ; and, ^^'"^pe. 
whilst thus reopening the Italian war, he commenced negotiations 
with certain of the coalitionists of the Holy League, in the hope of 
causing division amongst them, or even of attracting* some one of 
them to himself. He knew that the Venetians were dissatisfied 
and disquieted about their allies, especially the Emperor Maximilian, 
the new duke of Milan, Maximilian Sforza, and the Swiss. He had 
little difficulty in coming to an understanding with the Venetian 
senate ; and, on the 14th of May, 1513, a treaty of alliance, offen- 
sive and defensive, was signed at Blois between the king of France 
and the republic of Venice. Louis hoped also to find at Eome in 
the new pope, Leo X. [Cardinal John de' Medici, elected pope 
March 11, 1513], favourable inclinations ; but thev were at first 
very ambiguously and reservedly manifested. As a Florentine, Leo X. 



236 History of France, 

had a leaning towards France ; but as pope, he was not disposed 
to relinquish or disavow the policy of Julius II. as to the indepen- 
dence of Italy in respect of any foreign sovereign, and as to tiie 
extension of the power of the Holy See \ and he wanted time to 
make up his mind to infuse into his relations with Louis XII. good- 
Poor re "will instead of his predecessor's impassioned hostility. Louis had 
salts oi the j^ot and could not have any confidence in Ferdinand the Catholic ; 
foreign ^^^ ^® knew him to be as prudent as he was rascally, and he 
policy. concluded with him at Orthez, on the 1st of April, 1513, a year's 
truce, which Ferdinand took great care not to make known to his 
allies, Henry VIII. king of England, and the Emperor Maxiuiilian, 
the former of whom was very hot-tempered, and the latter very 
deeply involved, through his daughter Marguerite of Austria, in the 
■warlike league against France. This was all that was gained during 
the year of Julius II.'s death by Louis XII.'s attempts to break up 
or weaken the coalition against France ; and these feeble diplomatic 
advantages were soon nullified by the unsuccess of the French 
expedition in Milaness. Conquerors at Novara, the Swiss drove 
the French from the duchy of Milan, which La Tremoille had 
reconquered ; in Burgundy they besieged Dijon ; in the north the 
combined troops of Maximilian and Henry VIII. of England gained 
the battle of Guinegate, sometimes called battle of the Spurs, on 
account of the haste with which the French cavalry, under the 
influence of a panic flight, fled from the field of battle. The truce 
of Orleans, followed by the treaty of London, put a stop to these 
disasters, and the Italian question remained still undecided. 

Such was the situation in which France, after a reign of fifteen 
years and in spite of so many brave and devoted servants, had been 
placed by Louis XII.'s foreign policy. Had he managed the home 
affairs of his kingdom as badly and with as little success as he had 
matters abroad, is it necessary to say what would have been his 
people's feelings towards him, and what name he would have left 
in history 1 Happily for France and for the memory of Louis XII., 
his home-government was more sensible, more clear-sighted, more 
able, more moral, and more productive of good results than his 
foreign policy was. 
policy of When we consider this reign from this new point of view, we 

Louis XII. are at once struck by two facts : 1st, the great number of legislative 
and administrative acts that we meet with, bearing upon the general 
interests of the country, interests political, judicial, financial, and 
commercial ; the Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France con- 
tains forty-three important acts of this sort owing their origin to 
Louis XII.; it was clearly a government full of watchfulness, 



Home Policy of Louis XII. 237 

activity, and attention to good order and the public weal ; 2nd, the 

profound remembrance remaining in succeeding ages of this reign 

and its deserts ; a remembrance which was manifested, in 1560 

amongst the states-general of Orleans, in 1576 and 1588 amongst 

the states of Blois, in 1593 amongst the states of the League, and 

even down to 1614 amongst the states of Paris. During more 

than a hundred years France called to mind, and took pleasure in 

calling to mind the administration of Louis XII. as the type of a His admi- 

wise, intelligent, and effective regimen. Confidence may be felt in ^^strat on. 

a people's memory when it inspires them for so long afterwards with 

sentiments of justice and gratitude. 

If from the simple table of the acts of Louis XII. 's home-govern- 
ment we paps to an examination of their practical results, it is plain 
that they were good and salutary. 

Foreigners were not less impressed than the French themselves with 
the advance in order, activity, and prosperity which had taken place 
amongst the French community. Macchiavelli admits it, and, with 
the melanchol}'' of an Italian politician acting in the midst of rival- 
ries amongst the Italian republics, he attributes it above all to 
French unity, superior to that of any other State in Europe. 

As to the question, to whom reverts the honour of the good 
government at home under Louis XII., and of so much progress in 
tlie social condition of France, it may be attributed, in a great mea- 
sure, to the influence of the states assembled at Tours, in 1484, at 
the beginning of the reign of Charles VIII. ; but Louis XII. 's per- 
sonal share in the good home-government of France during his 
reign was also more meritorious. His chief merit, a rare one 
amongst the powerful of the earth, especially when there is a ques- 
tion of reforms and of liberty, was that he understood and enter- 
tained the requirements and wishes of his day ; he was a mere 
young prince of the blood when the states of 1484 were sitting at 
Tours ; but he did not forget them when he was king, and, far from 
repudiating their patriotic and modest work in the cause of reform 
and progress, he entered into it sincerely and earnestly with the aid 
of Cardinal d'Amboise, his honest, faithful, and ever influentiiil 
councillor. The character and natural instincts of Louis XII. 
inclined him towards the same views as his intelligence and modera- 
tion in politics suggested. He was kind, sympathetic towards his Hisintelli- 
people, and anxious to spare them ever}' burden and every suffering ^^^aIJ^ 
that was unnecessary, and to have justice, real and independent jus- tion. 
tice, rendered to all. He reduced the talliages a tenth at first and 
a third at a later period. He refused to a-^cept the dues usual on a 
joyful accession. When the wars in Italy caused him some extra- 



2^S 



History of France. 



ordinary expense he disposed of a portion of the roj'^al possessions, 
strictly administered as they were, before imposing fresh burdens 
upon the people. His court was inexpensive, and he had no 
favourites to enrich. His economy became proverbial ; it was 
sometimes made a reproach to him ; and things were carried so far 
that he was represented, on the stage of a popular theatre, ill, pale, 
and surrounded by doctors, who were holding a consultation as to 
the nature of his malady : they at last agreed to give him a potion 
of gold to take ; the sick man at once sat up, complaining of nothing 
more than a burning thirst. When informed of this scandalous 
piece of buffoonery, Louis contented himself with saying, " I had 
rather make courtiers laugh by my stinginess than my people weep 
by my extravagance." He was pressed to punish some insolent 
comedians, but, "I^o," said he, " amongst their ribaldries they may 
sometimes tell us useful truths ; let them amuse themselves, pro. 
vided that they respect the honour of women." In the administra- 
Admini- ^j^j^ qJ j^^gtice he accomplished important reforms, called for by 
justice. the states-general of 1484 and promised by Louis XI. and Charles 
YIIL, but nearly all of them left in suspense. The purchase of 
offices was abolished and replaced by a two-fold election : in all 
grades of the magistracy', when an office was vacant, the judges were 
to assemble to select three persons from whom the king should be 
bound to choose. The irremovability of the magistrates, which had 
been accepted but often violated by Louis XL, became under Louis 
XII. a fundamental rule. It was forbidden to every one of the king's 
magistrates, from the premier-president to the lowest provost, to 
accept any place or pension from any lord, under pain of suspension 
from their office or loss of their salary. The annual Mercurials 
(Wednesday meetings) became, in the supreme courts, a general and 
standing usage. The expenses of the law were reduced. In 1501, 
Louis XII. instituted at Aix, in Provence, a new Parliament ; in 
1499 the court of exchequer at Rouen, hitherto a supreme but mov- 
able and temporary court, became a fixed and permanent court which 
afterwards received, under Francis I., the title of Parliament. Be- 
ing convinced before long, by facts themselves, that these reforms 
were seriously meant by their author and were practically effective, 
the people conceived, in consequence, towards the king and the 
magistrates a general sentiment of gratitude and respect. 

Louis XII. 's private life also contributed to win for him, we will 

not say the respect and admiration, but the goodwill of the public. 

Private He was not, like Louis IX., a model of austeritj'- and sanctity ; but 

^** after the licentious court of Charles VII., the coarse habits of 

Louis XL and the easy morals of Charles VIIL, the French public 



Matrimonial Alliances. 239 

was not exacting. Louis XII. was thrice marrieil. His first wife, 
Joan, daughter of Louis XL, was an excellent and worthy princess, 
but ugly, ungraceful, and hump-backed. He had been almost forced 
to marry her, and he had no child by her. On ascending the throne 
he begged Pope Alexander VI. to annul his marriage ; the negotia- 
tion was anything but honourable either to the king or to the pope ; 
and the pope granted his bull in consideration of the favours shown 
to his unworthy son, Caesar Borgia, by the king. Joan alone 
behaved with a virtuous as well as modest pride, and ended her life 
in sanctity within a convent at Bourges, being whoUy devoted to 
pious works, regarded by the people as a saint, spoken of by bold 
preachers as a martyr and " still the true and legitimate queen of „ . . 
France," and treated at a distance with profound respect by the king monial 
who had put her away. Louis married in 1499 his predecessor's ^illia^ces. 
widow, Anne, duchess of Brittany, twenty-three years of age, Brittany. 
short, pretty, a little lame, witty, able, and firm. It was, on both 
sides, a marriage of policy, though romantic tales have been mixed 
up with it ; it was a suitable and honourable royal arrangement, 
without any lively affection on one side or the other, but with mutual 
esteem and regard. As queen, Anne was haughty, imperious, sharp- 
tempei^ed, and too much inclined to mix in intrigues and negotia- 
tions at Eome and Madrid, sometimes without regard for the king's 
policy j but she kept up her court with spirit and dignity, being 
respected by her ladies, whom she treated well, and favourably 
regarded by the public, who were well disposed towards her for hav- 
ing given Bi'ittany to France. Some courtiers showed their astonish- 
ment that the king should so patiently bear with a character so far 
from agreeable ; but " one must surely put up with something from 
a woman," said Louis, " when she loves her honour and her hus- 
band." After a union of fifteen years, An:ie of Brittanj'^ died on 
the 9th of January, 1514, at the castle of Blois, nearly thirty-seven 
years old. Louis was then fifty-two. He seemed very much to 
regret his wife ; but, some few months after her death, another mar- xiie Pirin- 
riage of policy was put, on his behalf, in course of negotiation. It ^^^^ ^^^\ 
was in connexion Avith Princess Mary of England, siscer of .Henry 
VIIL, with whom it was very important for Louis XIL and for 
France to be once more at peace and on good terms. Three-treaties 
were concluded on the 7th of August, 1514, between the kings of 
France and England in order to regulate the conditions of their politi- 
cal and matrimonial alliance; on the 13th of August the duke de 
Longueville, in his sovereign's name, espoused the Princess Mary 
at Greenwich ; and she, escorted to France by a brilliant embassy, 
arrived on the 8th of October at Abbeville where Louis XII. was 



240 History of France. 

awaiting her. Three days afterwards the marriage was solemnized 
there in state, and Louis, who had suffered from gout during the cere- 
mony, carried off his young queen to Paris after having had her 
crowned at St. Denis. Mary Tudor had given up the German 
prince, who was destined to hecome Charles Y., but not the hand- 
some English nobleman she loved. The duke of Suffolk went to 
France to see her after her marriage, and in her train she had as 
maid of honour a young girl, a beauty as well, who was one day to 
be queen of England — Anne Boleyn. 
A.D. 1515. Less than three months after this marriage, on the 1st of January, 
Louis XII 151^5, "the death-bell -men were traversing the streets of Paris, 
ringing their bells and crying, ' The good King Louis, father of the 
people, is dead.' " Louis XII., in fact, had died that very day at 
midnight, from an attack of gout and a rapid decline. 

To the last of his days he was animated by earnest sympathy and 
active solicitude for his people. It cost him a great deal to make 
with the king of England the treaties of August 7, 1514, to cede 
Tournai to the English, and to agree to the payment to them of 
a hundred thousand crowns a year for ten years. He did it to 
restore peace to Erance, attacked on her own soil, and feeling her 
prosperity threatened. Eor the same reason he negotiated with 
Pope Leo X., Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand the Catholic, 
His solioi- and he had very nearly attained the same end by entering once 
tudefor his jj^ore upon pacific relations with them, when death came and struck 
him down at the age of fifty-three. He died sorrowing over the 
concessions he had made from a patriotic sense of duty as much as 
from necessity, and full of disquietude about the future. He felt a 
sincere affection for Francis de Valois, count of Angouleme, his son- 
inrlaw and successor ; the marriage between his daughter Claude 
and that prince had been the chief and most difficult affair connected 
with his domestic life ; and it was only after the death of the queen 
Anne of Brittany, that he had it proclaimed and celebrated. The 
bravery, the brilliant parts, the amiable character, and the easy 
grace of Francis I. delighted him, but he dreaded his presumptuous 
inexperience, his reckless levity, and his ruinous extravagance ; and 
in his anxiety as a king and father he said, " We are labouring in 
vain ; this big boy will spoil everything for us." 




CHAPTER VII. 



THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION — FRANCIS I. AND HENRY It, 
(1515—1559). 

Two tilings, essential to political prosperity amongst coinmunitiea 
of men, have hitherto been to seek in France ; predominance of 
public spirit over the spirit of caste or of profession, and modera- 
tion and fixity in respect of national ambition both at home and 
abroad. France has been a victim to the personal passions of her 
chiefs and to her own reckless changeability. 

"We are entering upon the history of a period and a reign 
during which this intermixture of merits and demerits, of virtues 
and vices, of progress and backsliding, was powerfully and attrac- 
tively exhibited amongst the French. Francis I., his government 
and his times, commence the era of modern France, and bring 
clearly to view the causes of her greatnesses and her weaknesses. 
When, on the 1st of January, 1515, he ascended the throne before A.D. 1515. 

he had attained his one and twentieth year, it was a brilliant and A''''®^" 

•" ' sion of 

brave but spoilt child that became king. He had been under the Francis I. 
governance of Artus Gouffier, sire de Boisy, a nobleman of Poitou, 
who had exerted himself to make his royal pupil a loyal knight 
well trained in the moral code and all the graces of knighthood, but 
without drawing his attention to more serious studies or preparing 
him for the task of government. The young Francis d'Angouleme 



242 



History of France. 



Lonise de 
Savoy. 



Margue- 
rite de 
Valois. 



lived and was moulded under the influence of two women, his 
mother, Louise of Savoy, and his eldest sister Marguerite, who both 
of them loved and adored him with passionate idolatry. The former 
princess was proud, ambitious, audacious or pliant at need, able 
and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of 
pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her 
son neither moral principles nor a moral example : for him the 
supreme kingship, for herself the rank, influence and wealth of a 
queen-mother, and, for both, greatness that might subserve the 
gratification of their passions — this was all her dream and all her 
aim as a mother. Of quite another sort were the character and 
sentiments of Marguerite de Yalois. She was born on the 11th of 
April, 1492, and was, therefore, only two years older than her 
brother Francis ; but her more delicate natiire was sooner and more 
richly cultivated and developed. She was brought up " with 
strictness by a most excellent and most venerable dame, in whom 
all the virtues, at rivalry one with another, existed together " 
[Madame de Chatillon, whose deceased husband had been governour 
to King Charles YIII.j. As she was discovered to have rare 
intellectual gift3, and a very keen relish for learning, she was pro- 
vided with every kind of preceptors, who made her proficient in 
profane letters, as they were then called. Marguerite learnt Latin, 
Greek, philosophy, and especially theology. Intellectual pursuits^ 
however, were far from absorbing the whole of this young soul. 
" She," says a contemporary, " had an agreeable voice of touching 
tone which roused the tender inclinations that there are in the 
heart." Tenderness, a passionate tenderness, very early assumed 
the chief place in Marguerite's soul, and the first object of it was 
her brother Francis. When mother, son, and sister were spoken 
of, they were called a Trinity, and to this Marguerite herself bore 
witness when she said with charming modesty : 

" Such boon ia mine, to feel the amity 
That God hath pntten in our trinity, 
Wherein to make a third, I, all unfitted 
To be that number's shadow, am admitted." 

Marguerite it was for whom this close communion of three per- 
sons had the most dolorous consequences : we shall fall in with her 
more than once in the course of this history ; but, whether or no, 
she was assuredly the best of this princely trio, and Francis L 
was the most siooilt by it. There is nothing more demoralizing 
than to be an idol. 

Early gov- rpj^^ ^j,^^ ^^^^ ^^ j^-g government were sensible and of good omen. 

Francis I. He confirmed or renewed the treaties or truces which Louis XIL, 



^m^-^^"^"^") 




FRANCIS I. 



Francis I. and his advisers. 243 

at the close of Ms reign, had concluded with the Venetians, the 
Swiss, the pope, the king of England, the archduke Charles and 
the emperor Maximilian, in order to restore peace to his kingdom. 
At home Francis I. maintained at his council the principal and 
most tried servants of his predecessor, amongst others the finance- 
minister, Florimond Eobertet j and he raised to four the number 
of the marshals of France, in order to confer that dignity on Bayard's His advi- [ 
valiant friend, James of Chabannes, lord of la Palice, who even *®'''' 
under Louis XII. had been entitled by the Spaniards " the great 
marshal of France." At the same time he exalted to the highest 
offices in the State two new men, Charles, duke of Bourbon, who 
was still a mere youth, but already a warrior of renown, and 
Anthony Duprat, the able premier president of the parliament of 
Paris ; the former he made constable, and the latter chancellor of 
France. His mother, Louise of Savoy, was not unconcerned, it is 
said, in both promotions ; she was supposed to feel for the young 
constable something more than friendship, and she regarded the 
veteran magistrate, not without reason, as the man most calculated 
to unreservedly subserve the interests of the kingly power and 
her own. 

These \neasures, together with the language and the behaviour 
of Francis L and the care he took to conciliate all who approached 
him, made a favourable impression on France and on Europe. In 
Italy, especially, princes as well as people, and Pope Leo X. before 
411, flattered themselves, or were pleased to appear as if they 
flattered themselves, that war would not come near them again, 
and that the young king had his heart set only on making 
Burgundy secure against sudden and outrageous attacks from the 
Swiss. The aged king of Spain, Ferdinand the Catholic, adopting 
the views of his able minister. Cardinal Ximenes, alone showed 
distrust and anxiety ; he urged the pope, the emperor MaximOian, 
the Swiss, and Maximilian Sforza, duke of Milan, to form a league 
for the defence of Italy ; but Leo X. persisted in his desire of 
remaining or appearing neutral, as the common father of the faithful. 
Neither the king of France nor the pope had for long to take the 
trouble of practising mutual deception. It was announced at Eome Francis I. 
that Francis I., having arrived at Lyons in July, 1515, had just ^"^ ^' 
committed to his mother Louise the regency of the kingdom, and was 
pushing forward to-wards the'' Alps an army of sixty thousand men 
and a powerful artillery. He had won over to his service 
Octavian Fregoso, doge of Genoa ; and Barthelemy d'Alviano, the 
veteran general of his allies the Venetians, was encamped with his 
troops within hail of Verona, ready to support the French in the 

E 2 



244 History of France. 

struggle he foresaw. Francis I. on his side, was informed that 
twenty thousand Swiss, commanded hy the Roman, Prosper 
Colonna, were guarding the passes of the Alps in order to shut 
him out from Milaness. At the same time he received the news 
that the cardinal of Sion, his most zealous enemy in connexion 
with the Eoman Church, was devotedly employing, with the secret 
support of the emperor Maximilian, his influence and his preaching 
for the purpose of raising in Switzerland a second army of from 
twenty to five-and-twenty thousand men to he launched against 
him, if necessary, in Italy. A Spanish and Roman army, under 
the orders of Don Raymond of Cardone, rested motionless at 
some distance from the Po, waiting for events and for orders 
prescribing the part thej were to take. It was clear that Francis 
I., though he had been but six months king, was resolved and 
impatient to resume in Italy, and first of all in Milaness, the war 
of invasion and conquest which had been engaged in by Charles 
VIII. and Louis XII. : and the league of all the States of Italy, 
save Venice and Genoa, with the pope for their half-hearted patron 
and the Swiss for their fighting men, were collecting their forces 
to repel the invader. 
A.D. 1515. On the 13th of September, 1515, the French encountered and 
Meleenano (l-cfeated the Swiss at Melegnano, a town about three leagues from 
Sept. IStli. Milan , this victory was the most brilliant day in the annals of this 
reign. Old Marshal Trivulzio, who had taken part in seventeen 
battles, said that this was a strife of giants, beside which all the 
rest were but child's play. On the very battle-field, before making 
and creating knights of those who had done him good service, 
Francis I. was pleased to have himself made knight by the hand 
of Bayard. The effect of the battle was great, in Italy primarily, 
but also throughout Europe. It was, at the commencement of a 
new reign and under the impulse communicated by a young king, 
an event which seemed to be decisive and likely to remain so for a 
long while. Of all the sovereigns engaged in the Italian league 
against Francis I. he who was most anxious to appear temperate 
and almost neutral, namely Leo X., was precisely he who was 
most surprised and most troubled by it. He made up his mind 
without much trouble, however, to accept accomplished facts. 
When he had been elected pope, he had said to his brother, Julian 
de' Medici, "Enjoy we the papacy, since God hath given it us" 
[Godiamoci il papato, poiclie Dio ci I' ha dato]. He appeared to 
have no further thought than how to pluck from the event the 
advantages he could discover in it. His allies all set him an examplo 
of resignation On the 14th of September, the day after the battle, 



Francis f. treats with his adversaries. 245 

the Swiss took the road "back to their mountains. Francis I. 
entered Milan in triumph. Maximilian Sforza took refuge in the 
castle, and twenty days afterwards, on the 4th of October, surren- 
dered, consenting to retire to France with a pension of thirty 
thousand crowns, and the promise of being recommended for a car- 
dinal's hat, and almost consoled for his downfall *' by the pleasure of 
being delivered from the insolence of the Swiss, the exactions of 
the emperor Maximilian, and the rascalities of the Spaniards." Negotia- 
Fifteen years afterwards, in June, 1530, he died in oblivion at Paris, tions. 
Francis I. regained possession of all Milaness, adding thereto, with 
the pope's consent, the duchies of Parma and Piacenza, which had 
been detached from it in 1512. Two treaties, one of November 7, 
1515, and the other of ]!^ovember 29, 1516, re-established not only 
peace but perpetual alliance between the king of France and the 
thirteen Swiss cantons, with stipulated conditions in detail. Whilst 
these negotiations were in progress, Francis I. and Leo X., by a 
treaty published at Viterbo on the 13th of October, proclaimed 
their hearty reconciliation. The pope guaranteed to Francis I. the 
duchy of Milan, restored to him those of Parma and Piacenza, and 
recalled his troops which were still serving against the Venetians ; 
being careful, however, to cover his concessions by means of forms 
and pretexts which gave them the character of a necessity submitted 
to rather than that of an independent and definite engagement. 
Francis I. on his side, guaranteed to the pope all the possessions of 
the Church, renounced the patronage of the petty princes of the 
ecclesiastical estate, and promised to uphold the family of Medici 
in the position it had held at Florence, since, with the king of Spain's 
aid, in 1512, it had recovered the dominion there at the expense 
of the party of republicans and friends of France. 

The king of France and the pope had to discuss together ques- Francis 1. 
tions far more important on both sides than those which had just ^ ^ ^ 
been thus settled by their accredited agents. In the course of an 
interview they had at Bologna, Leo X. obtained of Francis an 
agreement which abolished the Pragmatic Sanction. Thus sup- 
ported by the Holy See and by the Venetians, the king of France 
saw the road to I^aples once more opened before his troops; for the 
young Charles of Luxemburg, who had just succeeded in Spain to 
his grandfather Ferdinand the Catholic, was too busy entering upon 
his inheritance to think of disturbing any plan of Italian conquest 
which Francis I. might entertain ; but this prince preferred enjoy- 
ing his victory rather than completing it The treaty of I^oyon 
gave, during a short time, repose to Europe, and allowed the two 
rivals leisure for the preparing of a far more terrible war. Francis L 



24^ Hisfory of France. 

returned to Milan, leaving at Bologna, for the purpose of treating 
Chancellor in detail the affair of the Pragmatic Sanction, his chancellor, Duprat, 
Duprat. ^yj^Q j^j^^ accompanied him during all this campaign as his adviser 
and negotiator. In him the king had, under the name and guise 
of premier magistrate of the realm, a servant whose hold and com- 
plaisant ahilities he was not slow to recognize and to put in use. 
At the commencement of the war for the conquest of Milaness 
there was a want of money, and Francis I. hesitated to so soon 
impose new taxes. Duprat gave a scandalous extension to a practice 
which had heen for a long Avhile in use, hut had always been 
reprobated and sometimes formally prohibited, namely, the sale of 
public appointments or offices : not only did he create a multitude 
of financial and administrative offices, the sale of which brought 
considerable sums into the treasury, but he introduced the abuse 
into the very heart of the judicial body; the tribunals were encum- 
bered by newly-created magistrates. The Estates of Languedoc 
complained in vain. The Parliament of Paris was in its turn 
attacked, and Duprat having resolved to strike a great blow, an edict 
of January 31, 1522, created within the Parliament a fourth 
chamber composed of eighteen councillors and two presidents, all of 
fresh and, no doubt, venal appointment, though the edict dared not 
avow as much. The registration of this iniquitous measure was 
obtained by force, and thus began to be implanted in that which 
should be the most respected and the most independent amongst 
the functions of government, namely, the administration of justice, 
not only the practice but the fundamental maxim of absolute go- 
vernment. Chancellor Duprat, if we are not mistaken, was, in the 
sixteenth century, the first chief of the French magistracy to make 
use of language despotic not only in fact but also in principle ; 
■ ■- he was the delegate, the organ, the representative of the king ; it 

was in the name of the king himself that he affirmed the absolute 
power of the kingship and the absolute duty of submission. 
Francis I. could not have committed the negotiation with Leo X. 
in respect of Charles YIT.'s Pragmatic Sanction to a man with 
more inclination and better adapted for the work to be accom- 
plished. 
Praematic "^^^ Pragmatic Sanction had three principal objects : — 
Sanction. 1. Tq uphold the liberties and the influence of the faithful in 
the government of the Church, by sanctioning their right to elect 
ministers of the Christian faith, especially parish priests and 
bishops; 

2. To guarantee the liberties and rights of tbe Church herself in 
her relations with her Head, the pope, by proclaiming the necessity 



The Pragmatic Sanction atid the Concordat. 247 

for the regular intervention of councils and their superiority in 

regard to the pope ; 

3. To prevent or reform abuses in the relations of the papacy Its purport 

with the State and Church of France in the matter of ecclesiastical ^'^l' '^" 

suits. 

tribute, especially as to the receipt by the pope, under the name of 
annates, of the first year's revenue of the different ecclesiastical 
offices and benefices. 

In the fifteenth century it was the general opinion in France, 
in State and in Church, that there was in these dispositions nothing 
more than the primitive and traditional liberties and rights of the 
Christian Church. There was no thought of imposing upon tho 
papacy any new regimen, but only of defending the old and legiti- 
mate regimen, recognized and upheld by St. Louis in the thirteenth 
century as well as by Charles VI F. in the fifteenth. 

The popes, nevertheless, had all of them protested since the 
days of Charles VII. against the Pragmatic Sanction as an attack 
upon their rights, and had demanded its abolition. This important 
edict, then, was still vigorous in 1515, when Francis I., after his 
victory at Melegnano and his reconciliation with the pope, left 
chancellor Duprat at Bologna to pursue the negotiation reopened 
on that subject. The compensation, of which Leo X., on redemand- 
iug the abolition of the Pra.gmatic Sanction, had given a peep to 
Francis L, could not fail to have charms for a prince so little 
scrupulous, and for his still less scrupulous chancellor. The pope 
proposed that the Pragmatic, once for all abolished, should be 
replaced by a Concordat between the two sovereigns, and that 
this Qoncordat, whilst putting a stop to the election of the clergy The " Con- 
by the faithful, should transfer to the king the right of nomi- ^'^^ * ' 
nation to bishoprics and other great ecclesiastical offices and 
benefices, reserving to the pope the right of presentation of 
prelates nominated . by the king. This, considering the condition 
of society and government in the sixteenth century, in the absence 
of political and religious liberty, was to take away from the 
Church her own existence and divide her between two masters, 
without giving her, as regarded either of them, any other guarantee of 
independence than the mere chance of their dissensions and quarrels. 

Francis I. and his chancellor saw in the proposed Concordat 
nothing but the great increment of influence it secured to them, 
by making all the dignitaries of the Church suppliants, at first, and 
then, clients of the kingship. After some difficulties as to points 
of detail, the Concordat was concluded and signed on the 18th of 
August, 1516. Seven months afterwards it was registered, notwith- 
standing the opposition of the parliament and the university of Paris. 



248 History of France. 

Then it was that Francis I. and his chancellor, Duprat, loudly 
proclaimed and practised the maxims of absolute power ; in the 
Church, the Pragmatic Sanction was abolished ; and in the State, 
Francis I., during a reign of thirty-two years, did not once convoke 
the States -general, and laboured only to set up the sovereign right 
of his own sole will. The Church was despoiled of her electoral 
autonomy ; and the magistracy, treated with haughty and silly 
impertinence, was vanquished and humiliated in the exercise of its 
right of remonstrance. The Concordat of 1516 was not the only, 
but it was the gravest, pact of alliance concluded between the 
papacy and the French kingship for the promotion mutually of 
absolute power. 

The death of Maximilian and the election of a new emperor were 
the proximate causes of the renewal of hostilities between Francis I. 
and Charles V. ; both these princes were candidates ; and by be- 
s|;owing the imj)erial crown upon the latter, there is no doubt that 
the electors adopted the safest course; but in doing so they gave the 
signal for a struggle of the most desperate and protracted character. 
Charles V. Whatever pains were taken by Francis I. to keep up a good 
elected appearance after this heavy reverse, his mortification was profound 
and he thought of nothing but getting his revenge. He flattered 
himself he would find something of the sort in a solemn interview 
and an appearance of alliance with Henry YIII., king of England, 
who had, like himself, just undergone in the election to the 
empire a less flagrant but an analogous reverse. It had already, 
in the previous year and on the occasion of a treaty concluded 
between the two kings for the restitution of Tournai to France, 
l)een settled that they should meet before long in token of recon- 
ciliation. The interview took place on the 31st of May, 1520, 
between Ardres and Guines, in Picardy ; it has remained cele- 
brated in history far more for its royal pomp, and for the personal 
incidents which were connected with it, than for its political results. 
The Field It was called T}t,e Field of the Cloth of Gold- ; and the courtiers 
oftheCloth ^y]^Q attended the two sovereigns felt bound to almost lival them 
in sumptuousness, " insomuch," says the contemporary Martin du 
Bellay, " that many bore thither their mills, their forests, aj,id 
their meadows on their backs." The two kings signed a treaty 
whereby the dauphin of France was to marry Princess Mary, only 
daughter at that time of Henry VIII., to whom Francis I. under- 
took to pay annually a sum of 100,000 livres [2,800,000 francs or 
£112,000 in the money of our day] until the marriage was cele- 
brated, which would not be for some time yet, as the English 
princess was only four years old. 



Francis I. and Henry VIII. 249 

Having left the Wield of ClotTt of Gold for Amboise, his favourite Henry vni 
residence, Francis I. discovered that Henry VIII., instead of pj^gj.igg y^ 
returning direct to England, had gone, on the 10th of July, to 
Gravelines in Flanders, to pay a visit to Charles V., who had 
afterwards accompanied him to Calais. The two sovereigns had 
spent three days there, and Charles Y., on separating from the king 
of England, had commissioned him to regulate, as arbiter, all 
difficulties that might arise between himself and the king of 
France. Assuredly nothing was less calculated to inspire Francis I. 
with confidence in the results of his meeting with Henry VIII. and 
of their mutual courtesies. Though he desired to avoid the 
appearance of taking the initiative in war, he sought every occasion 
and pretext for recommencing it ; and it was not long before he 
found them in the Low Countries, in Navarre, and in Italy. A 
trial was made of Henry VIII. 's mediation and of a conference at 
Calais ; and a discussion was raised touching the legitimate nature 
of the protection afforded by the two rival sovereigns to their petty 
allies. But the real fact was that Francis I. had a reverse to make 
up for and a passion to gratify ; and the struggle recommenced in 
April, 1521, in the Low Countries. The campaign opened in the 
north, to the advantage of France, by the capture of Hesdin ; 
Admiral Bonnivet, who had the command on the frontier of 
Spain, reduced some small forts of Biscay and the fortress of Font- 
arabia ; and Marshal de Lautrec, governor of Milaness, had orders 
to set out at once to go and defend it against the Spaniards and 
Imperialists who were concentrating for its invasion. 

Lautrec was but little adapted for this important commission. 
He had been made governor of Milaness in August, 1516, to 
replace the constable de Bourbon, whose recall to France the Lautrec. 
queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, had desired and stimulated. Lau- 
trec had succeeded ill in his government. He was active and 
brave, but he was harsh, haughty, jealous, imperious, and grasping ; 
and he had embroiled himself with most of the Milanese lords, 
amongst others with the veteran J. J. Trivulzio, who, under 
Charles VIII. and Louis XII., had done France such great service 
in Italy. When he set out to go and take the command in Italy, 
he found himself at the head of an army numerous indeed, but 
badly equipped, badly paid, and at grips with Prosper Colonna, the 
most able amongst the chiefs of the coalition formed at this 
juncture between Charles V. and Pope Leo X. against the French. 
Lautrec did not succeed in preventing Milan from falling into the 
hands of the Imperialists, and, after an uncertain campaign of 
some months' duration, he lost at La Bicocca, near Monza, on the 



25Q 



History of France. 



Death of 

Semblan- 

cay. 



Constable 
de Bour- 
bon's 
treacliery 



Policy of 
Francis I. 



27th of April, 1522, a battle, which left in the power of rra.ncis I., 
in Lombardy, only the citadels of MUan, Cremona, and Novara. 
The funds for the payment of the army had been sent, but Louis 
of Savoy had kept them back out of hatred for Lautrec's sister, the 
Duchess of Chateaubriand, who, at that time, was all powerful over 
the mind of Francis I. The king then allowed the surintendant 
Semblan9ay, who was accused of that crime, to perish on the gallows. 
The same princess drove by her injustice and partiality the 
Ccmstable de Bourbon to enter upon a plot against the safety of 
the State. As M. Michelet remarks, the very existence of France 
as a kingdom was endangered by this conspiracy. Bourbon had 
promised Charles V. that he would attack Burgundy as soon as 
Francis I. had crossed the Alps, and so bring about the rebellion of 
five provinces which he believed were entirely at his discretion ; 
the kingdom of Provence was to be re-established on his behalf, 
and France, divided between Spain and England, would have lost 
for ever its political importance. 

According to what appears, Bourbon had harboured a design of 
commencing his enterprise with a very bold stroke. Being 
informed that Francis I. was preparing to go in person and wage 
war upon Italy, he had resolved to carry him off on the road to 
Lyons, and, when once he had the king in his hands, he flattered 
himself he would do as he pleased with the kingdom. If his 
attempt were unsuccessful, he would bide his time until Francis I. 
was engaged in Milaness, Charles V. had entered Guienne and 
Henry YIII. was in Picardy ; he would then assemble a thousand 
men-at-arms, six thousand foot and twelve thousand lanzknechts, 
and would make for the Alps, to cut the king off from any com- 
munication with France. This plan rested upon the assumption 
that the king would, as he had announced, leave the constable in 
France with an honourable title and an apparent share in the 
government of the kingdom, though really isolated and debarred 
from action. But Francis had full cognizance of the details of 
the conspiracy through two Norman gentlemen whom the constable 
had imprudently tried to get to join in it, and who, not content 
with refusing, had revealed the matter at confession to the bishop 
of Lisieux, who had lost no time in giving information to sire de 
Breze, grand seneschal of Normandy. Breze at once reported it to 
the king. Under such grave and urgent circumstances, Francis I. 
behaved on the one hand with more prudence and efficiency than 
he had yet displayed, and on the other with his usual levity and 
indulgence towards his favourites. Abandoning his expedition in 
persott into Italy, he first concerned himself for that internal 



France threatened by the Imperialists. 25 1 

Security of liis Icingdora, which was threatened on the east and 
liorth by the Imperialists and the English, and on the south by the 
Spaniards, all united in considerable force and already in motion. 
Francis opposed to them in the east and north the young Count 
Claude of Guise, the first celebrity amongst his celebrated race, 
the veteran Louis de la Tremoille, the most tried of all his 
warriors, and the duke of Vendome, head of the younger branch 
of the House of Bourbon. Into the south he sent Marshal de 
Lautrec, who was more brave than successful, but of proved fidelity. Northern 
All these captains acquitted themselves honourably. Claude ofy^ded 
Guise defeated a body of twelve thousand lanzknechts who had Guise and 
already penetrated into Champagne ; he hurled them back into ?j?' Tremo 
Lorraine and dispersed them beneath the walls of the little town 
of JS^eufchateau, where the princesses and ladies of Lorraine, 
showing themselves at the windows, looked on and applauded 
their discomfiture. La Tremoille's only forces were very inferior to 
the thirty-five thousand Imperialists or English who had entered 
Picardy ; but he managed to make of his small garrisons such 
prompt and skilful use that the invaders were unable to get hold 
of a single place, and advanced somewhat heedlessly to the very 
banks of the Oise, whence the alarm spread rapidly to Paris. The 
duke of Yendome, whom the king at once despatched thither 
with a small body of men-at-arms, marched night and day to the 
assistance of the Parisians, harangued the parliament and Hotel 
de Vdle vehemently on the conspiracy of the constable de Bourbon, 
and succeeded so well in reassuring them, that companies of the city- 
militia eagerly joined his troops, and the foreigners, in dread of 
finding themselves hemmed in, judged it prudent to fall back, 
leaving Picardy in a state of equal irritation and devastation. In. 
the south, Lautrec, after having made head for three days and 
three nights against the attacks of a Spanish army which had 
crossed the Pyrenees under the orders of the constable of Castillo, 
forced it to raise the siege and beat a retreat. Everywhere, in the 
provinces as well as at the court, the feudal nobility, chieftains and 
simple gentlemen, remained faithful to the king ; the magistrates 
and the people supported the military ; it was the whole nation that 
rose against one great lord, who, for his own purposes, was making 
alliance with foreigners against the king and the country. 

In respect of Italy, Francis I. was less wise and less successful, ^'^^f^'* 
Not only did he persist in the stereotyped madness of the conquest 
of Milaness and the kingdom of Naples, but abandoning for the 
moment the prosecution of it in person, he entrusted it to his 
favourite^ Admiral Bonnivet, a brave soldier, alternately rash and 



252 History of France. 

backward, presumptuous and irresolute, who had already lost credit 
by the mistakes he had committed, and the reverses he had experi- 
enced in that arena. The campaign of 1524 in Italy, brilliant as 
was its beginning, what with the number and the fine appearance 
Compaign of the troops under Bonnivet's orders, was, as it went on, nothing 
Bliinder~of ^^^ ^ series of hesitations, contradictory movements, blunders, and 
theFrench, checks, which the army itself set down to its general's account. 
The situation of the French army before Milan was now becoming 
more and more, not insecure onl}'^, but critical. Bonnivet considered 
it his duty to abandon it and fall back towards Piedmont, where 
he reckoned upon finding a corps of five thousand Swiss who were 
coming to support their compatriots engaged in the service of France. 
Near Romagnano, on the banks of the Sesia, the retreat was hotly 
pressed by the imperial army, the command of which had been 
ultimately given by Charles V. to the constable de Bourbon, with 
whom were associated the viceroy of I^aples, Charles de Lannoy, 
and Ferdinand d'Avalos, marquis of Pescara, the most able amongst 
the i^eapolitan officers. On the 30th of April, 1524, some disorder 
took place in the retreat of the French; and Bonnivet, being 
severely wounded, had to give up the command to the count of 
St. Pol and to Chevalier Bayard. Bayard, last as well as first in 
the fight, according to his custom, charged at the head of some 
men-at-arms upon the Imperialists who were pressing the French 
Death of too closely, when he was himself struck by a shot from an arquebus. 
Bayard which shattered his reins. " Jesus, my God," he cried, " I am 
^ ■'' dead ! " He then took his sword by the handle, and kissed the 

cross-hilt of it as the sign of the cross, saying aloud as he did so : 
" Have pity on me, God, according to Thy great mercy " {Miserere 
mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam). The constable 
de Bourbon, being informed of his wound, came to him, saying, 
** Bayard, my friend, I am sore distressed at your mishap : there is 
nothing for it but patience ; give not way to melancholy ; I wiU 
send in quest of the best surgeons in this country, and, by God's 
help, you will soon be healed." " My lord," answered Bayard, " there 
is no pity for me ; I die, having done my duty ; but I have pity for 
you, to see you serving against your king, your country, and your 
oath." Bourbon withdrew without a word. 

The French army continued its retreat under the orders of the 
count of St. Pol, and re-entered France by way of Suza and Brian- 
^on. It was Francis I.'s third time of losing Milaness. Charles V., 
enchanted at the news, wrote on the 24th of May to Henry VIII. : 
**I keep you advertised of the good opportunity it has pleased God 
to oflfer us of giving a full account of our common enemy. I pray 



Invasion of Provence. 253 

you to carry into effect on your side that whicli you and I have for 
a long while desired, wherein I for nx^ part will exert myself with 
all my might. According to a plan settled hy him with Henry 
VIII. and Charles V., Bourbon entered Provence on the 7th of July, ^ -q J524, 
1524, at the head of an army of eighteen thousand men, which was Bourbon 
to he joined before long by six or seven thousand more. He had p^oyence 
no difficulty in occupying Antibes, Frejus, Praguignan, Brignoles, 
and even Aix ; and he already began to assume the title of count 
of Provence, whilst preparing for a rapid march along by the Phone 
and a rush upon Lyons, the chief aim of the campaign ; but the 
Spanish generals whom Charles V. had associated with him, and 
amongst others the most eminent of them, the marquis of Pescara, 
peremptorily insisted that, according to their master's order, he 
should besiege and take Marseilles. Charles Y. cared more for the 
coasts of the Mediterranean than for those of the Channel ; he flat- 
tered himself that he would make of Marseilles a southern Calais, 
which should connect Germany and Spain, and secure their com- 
munications, political and commercial. Bourbon objected and 
resisted ; it was the abandonment of his general plan for this war, 
and a painful proof how powerless he was against the wishes of the 
two sovereigns of whom he was only the tool, althotigh they called 
him their ally. Being forced to yield, he began the siege of Mar- 
seilles on the 19th of August. The place, though but slightly 
fortified and ill supplied, made an energetic resistance; the name 
and the presence of Bourbon at the head of the besiegers excited 
patriotism ; the burgesses turned soldiers ; the cannon of the 
besiegers laid open their walls, but they threw up a second line, an 
earthen rampart, called tlie ladies^ rampart, because all the women 
in the city had Avorked at it. The siege was protracted ; the rein- 
forcements expected by Bourbon did not arrive ; a shot from 
Marseilles penetrated into Pescara's tent, and killed his almoner 
and two of his gentlemen. Bourbon rushed up. " Don't you see 1 " 
said Pescara to him ironically : " here are the keys sent to you by 
the timid consuls of Marseilles." Bourbon resolved to attempt an 
assault ; the lanzknechts and the Italians refused ; Bourbon asked 
Pescara for his Spaniards, but Pescara would only consent on 
condition that the breach was reconnoitred afresh. Seven soldiers 
were told off for this duty ; four were killed and the other three 
returned wounded, reporting that betAveen the open breach and the 
intrenchment extended a large ditch filled with fireworks and de- Defeated 
fended by several batteries. The assembled general officers looked before 
at one another in silence. " Well, gentlemen," said Pescara, *' you ^^rseillea. 
see that the folks of Marseilles keep a table well spread for our 



2^4 History of France. \ 

reception ; if you like to go and sup in paradise, you are your own 
masters so far ; as for me, who have no desire to go thither just 
yet, I am off. But helieve me," he added seriously, " we had best 
return to Milanese ; we have left that country without a soldier ; 
we might possibly find our return cut off." Whereupon Pescara 
got up and went out; and the majority of the ofi&cers followed 
him. Bourbon remained almost alone, divided between anger and 
shame. Almost as he quitted this scene he heard that Francis I. 
was advancing towards Provence with an army. The king had 
suddenly decided to go to the succour of Marseilles, which was 
making so good a defence. jN'othing could be a bitterer pill for 
Bourbon than to retire before Francis I., whom he had but lately 
promised to dethrone ; but his position condemned him to suffer 
every thing, without allowing him the least hesitation; and on the 
The siege of 28 th of September, 1524, he raised the siege of Marseilles and 
Marseilles resumed the road to Italy, harassed even beyond Toulon, by the 
(Sept. 28). French advance-guard, eager in its pursuit of the traitor even more 
than of the enemy. 

. After Bourbon's precipitate retreat, the position of Francis I. 
was a good one. He had triumphed over conspiracy and invasion ; 
the conspiracy had not been catching, and the invasion had failed 
on all the frontiers. If the king, in security within his kingdom, 
had confined himself to it, whilst applying himself to the task of 
governing it weU, he would have obtained all the strength he 
required to make himself feared and deferred to abroad. For a 
while he seemed to have entertained this design : on the 25th of 
September, 1523, he published an important ordinance for the 
repression of disorderliuess and outrages on the part of the soldiery 
in France itself; and, on the 28th of December following, a regu- 
lation as to the administration of finances established a control 
Financial °^^^ ^^° various exchequer-officers, and announced the king's 
regula- intention of putting some limits to his personal expenses, " not 
^'?"*°^*® including, however," said he, "the ordinary run of our little 
necessities and pleasures." This singular reservation was the 
faithful exponent of his character ; he was licentious at home and 
adventurous abroad, being swayed by his coarse passions and his war- 
like fancies. When Bourbon and the imperial army had evacuated 
Provence, the king loudly proclaimed his purpose of pursuing them 
into Italy, and of once more going forth to the conquest of 
Milaness, and perhaps also of the kingdom of Naples, that incurable 
craze of French kings in the sixteenth century. In vain did his 
most experienced warriors, La Tremoille and Chabannes, exert 
themselves to divert him from such a campaign, for which, he was 



Francis I. crosses the Alps. 25$ 

not prejyared ; in vain did His mother herself ivrite to him, "begging 
him to wait and see her, for that she had important matters to 
impart to him. He answered by sending her the ordinance which 
conferred upon her the regency during his absence ; and, at the 
end of October, 1524, he had crossed the Alps, anxious to go and 
risk in Milaness the stake he had just won in Provence against 
Charles V. 

Arriving speedily in front of Milan, he there found the imperial 
army which had retired before him ; there was a fight in one of the 
outskirts ; but Bourbon recognized the impossibility of maintaining Francis I. 
a siege in a town of which the fortifications were in ruins, and with invades 
disheartened troops. On the line of march which they had pursued, „,^pg °" 
from Lodi to Milan, there was nothing to be seen but cuirasses, (October) 
arquebuses tossed hither and thither, dead horses, and men dying 
of fatigue and scarcely able to drag themselves along. Bourbon 
evacuated Milan and, taking a resolution as bold as it was singular, 
abruptly abandoned, so far as he was personally concerned, that 
defeated and disorganized army, to go and seek for and reorganize 
another at a distance. Francis I.'s veteran generals. Marshals la 
Tremoille and Chabannes, had advised him to pursue without 
pause the beaten and disorganized imperial army, but Admiral 
Bonnivet, " whose counsel the king made us© of more than of 
any other," says Du Bellay, pressed Francis 1. to make himself 
master, before every thing, of the principal strong places in Lom- 
bardy, especially of Pavia, the second city in the duchy of Milan. 
Francis followed this counsel, and on the 26th of August, 1524,1 
twenty days after setting out from Aix in Provence, he appeared -o ^f 1. .» 
with his army in frgnt of Pavia. On learning this resolution, Pavia. 
Pescara joyously exclaimed, "We were vanquished; a little while C^ot. 28). 
and we shall be vanquishers." Pavia had for governor a Spanish 
veteran, Antony de Leyva, who had distinguished himself at the 
battle of Eavenna, in 1512, by his vigilance and indomitable 
tenacity : and he held out for nearly four months, first against 
assaults and then against investment by the French army. Francis I. 
decided to accept battle as soon as it should be offered him. The 
imperial leaders, at a council held on the 23rd of February, deter- 
mined to offer it next day. 

The two armies were of pretty equal strength : they had each 
from twenty to five and twenty thousand infantry, French, 
Germans, Spaniards, lanzknechts, and Swiss. Francis I. had the 
advantage in artillery and in heavy cavalry, called at that time the 
gendarmerie, that is to say, the corps of men-at-arms in heavy, 
armour with their servants; but his troops were inferior in.. 



256 History of France. 

effectives to the Imperialists, and Charles V.'s two generals, 
Bourbon and Pescara, were, as men of war, far superior to 
Francis I. and his favourite Bonnivet, After a desperate struggle 
the French were defeated ; the gendarmerie gave way, and the 
German lanzknechts cut to pieces the Swiss auxiliaries. One of 
Bourbon's most intimate confidants, the lord of Pomperant, who, 
in 1523, had accompanied the constable in his flight through 
France, came up- at this critical moment, recognized the king, 
and, beating off the soldiers with his sword, ranged himself at the 
king's side, represented to him the necessity of yielding, and pressed 
him to surrender to the duke of Bourbon, who was not far off. 
" No," said the king, " rather die than pledge my faith to a traitor : 
where is the viceroy of Naples?" It took some time to find 
Lannoy ; but at last he arrived and put one knee on the ground 
before Francis I., who handed his sword to him. Lannoy took 
it with marks of the most profound respect, and immediately 

Francis I. gave him another. The battle was over, and Francis I. was 

Charted V Charles Y.'s prisoner. 

He had shown himself an imprudent and unskilful general, but 
at the same time a hero. His conquerors, both officers and privates, 
could not help, whilst they secured his person, showing their admi- 
ration for him. When he sat down to table, after having had his 
wounds, which were slight, attended to, Bourbon approached him 
respectfully and presented him with a dinner-napkin ; and the king 
took it without embarrassment, and with frigid and curt politeness. 
He next day granted him an interview, at which an accommodation 
took place with due formalities on both sides, but nothing more. 
Francis asked to be excused from entering Pavi^a, that he might not be 
a gazing-stock in a town that he had so nearly taken. He was, 
accordingly, conducted to Pizzighittone, a little fortress between 
Milan and Cremona. He wrote thence two letters, one to his 
mother the regent, and the other to Charles Y., which are here 
given word for word, because they so well depict his character and 
the state of his mind in his hour of calamity : — 

His letters « \^ rpQ i-j^q regent of France : Madame, that you may know how 
mother stands the rest of my misfortune : there is nothing in the world left to 
me hut honour and my life, which is safe. And in order that, in 
your adversity, this news might bring you some little comfort, I 
prayed for permission to write you this letter, which was readily 
granted me; entreating you, in the exercise of your accustomed 
prudence, to be pleased not to do any thing rash, for I have hope 
after all that God will not forsake me. Commending to you my 
children your grandchildren, and entreating you to give the bearer 



Treaty of Madrid. 257 

a free passage, going and returning, to Spain, for he is going to the 
emperor to learn how it is his pleasure that I should be treated." 

2. " To the Emperor Charles V. : If liberty had been sooner ^nd lo the 
granted me by ray cousin the viceroy, I should not have delayed emperor, 
so long to do my duty towards you, according as the time and 
circumstances in which I am placed require ; having no other 
comfort under my misfortune than a reliance on your goodness, 
which, if it so please, shall employ the results of victory with, 
honourableness towards me ; having steadfast hope that your virtue 
would not willingly constrain me to anything that was not honour- 
able ; entreating you to consult your own heart as to what you 
shall be pleased to do with me ; feeling sure that the will of a 
prince such as you are cannot be coupled with aught but honour 
and magnanimity. "Wherefore, if it please you to have so much 
honourable pity as to answer for the safety which a captive king 
of France deserves to find, whom there is a desire to render friendly 
and not desperate, you may be sure of obtaining an acquisition 
instead of a useless prisoner, and of making a king of France your 
slave for ever." 

The former of these two letters has had its native hue somewhat 
altered in the majoritj'' of histories, in which it has been compressed 
into those eloquent words, " All is lost save honour." The second 
needs no comment to make apparent what it lacks of kingly pride 
and personal dignity. Beneath the warrior's heroism there was in 
the qualities of Francis I. more of what is outwardly brilliant and 
winning than of real strength and solidity. 

Taken prisoner to Spain, the unfortunate monarch was restored to Treaty of 
liberty only on conditions of his signing the treaty of Madrid, by Madiid. 
which he abandoned Italy, Burgundy, Artois, Flanders, besides 
restoring to the constable of Bourbon his confiscated estates. He 
likewise promised to marry the sister of Charles V., and gave both 
his sons as hostages. 

On becoming king again he fell under the dominion of three 
personal sentiments, which exercised a decisive influence upon his 
conduct and, consequently, upon the destiny of France : joy at his 
liberation, a thirsting for revenge, we will not say for vengeance 
to be wreaked on Charles V,, and the burden of the engagement 
he had contracted at Madrid in order to recover his liberty, alter- 
nately swayed him. The envoys of Charles V., with Lannoy, the Meeting at 
viceroy of Naples at their head, went to Cognac to demand execu- Cognac, 
tion of the treaty of Madrid. Francis waited, ere he gave them 
an answer, for the arrival of the delegates from the estates of Bur- 
gundy, whom lie had summoned to have their opinion as to the 

ft 



2$S History of France. 

The dele- f'^ssion of the ducLy. These delegates, meeting at Cognac in June, 
gates from 1527, formally repudiated the cession, being opposed, they said, to 
reVifdiaiJ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ kingdom, to the righ's of the king, who could not 
the cession by his sole authority alienate any portion of his dominions, and to 
cf the j-^jg coronation-oath, which superseded his oaths made at Madrid. 

Francis invited the envoys of Charles V. to a solemn meeting of 
his court and council present at Cognac, at which the delegates 
from Burgundj'' repeated their protest. "Whilst availing himself of 
this declaration as an insurmountable obstacle to the complete exe- 
cution of the treaty of Madrid, Francis offered to give two million 
crowns for the redemption of Burgundy, and to observe the other 
arrangements of the treaty, including the relinquishment of Italy 
and his marriage with the sister of Charles Y. Charles formally 
rejected this proposal, and required of him to keep his oath. 

However determined he was, at bottom, to elude the strict exe- 
cution of the treaty of Madrid, Francis was anxious to rebut the 
charge of perjury by shifting the responsibilitj'^ on to the shoulders 
of the people themselves and their representatives. He did not 
A.D. 1527. like to summon the states general of the kingdom and recognize 
tbeVaifia ^^^^^ right as well as their power ; but, after the meeting at Cognac, 
mem in he went to Paris, and, on the 12th of December, 1527, the parlia- 
Paris. ment met in state with the adjunct of the princes of the blood, a 
great number of cardinals, bishops, noblemen, deputies from the 
parliaments of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Eouen, Dijon, Grenoble and 
Aix, and the municipal body of Paris. In presence of this assem- 
bly the king went over the history of his reign, his expeditions in 
Italy, his alternate successes and reverses and his captivity. " If 
my subjects have suffered," he said, " I have suffered with them." 
He then caused to be read the letters patent whereby he had abdi- 
cated and transferred the crown to his son the dauphin, devoting 
himself to captivity for ever. He explained the present condition 
of the finances, and what he could furnish for the ransom of his 
sons detained as hostages ; and he ended by offering to return as a 
prisoner to Spain if no other way could be found out of a difficult 
position, for he acknowledged having given his word, adding, 
however, that he had thought it pledged him to nothing since it 
had not been given freely. 

This last argument was of no value morally or diplomatically ; but 
in his bearing and his language Frarcis I. displayed grandeur and 
emotion. The assembly also showed emotion ; they were four days 
deliberating ; with some slight diversity of form the various bodies 
present came to the same conclusion ; and, on the 16th of December, 
1527, the parliament decided that the king was not bound either 



The Holy League. 259 

to return to Spain or to execute, as to that matter, tlie treaty of 
Madrid, and that he might with full sanction and justice levy on his 
suhjects two millions of crowns for the ransom of his sons and the 
other reqmrements of the State. 

Before inviting such manifestations Francis I. had taken measiires 
to prevent them from being in vain. As early as the 22nd of May, A.D. 1526 
1526, whilst he was still deliberating with his court and parliament ^^® ^-^^^ 
as to how he should behave towards Charles Y. touching the treaty 
of Madrid, Francis I. entered into the Holy League with the pope, 
the Venetians and the duke of Milan for the independence of Italy; 
and on the 8th of August following Francis I. and Henry VIII. 
undertook, by a special treaty, to give no assistance one against the 
other to Charles V., and Henry VIII. promised to exert all his 
efforts to get Francis I.'s two sons, left as hostages in Spain, set at 
liberty. Thus the war between Francis I. and Charles V., after 
fifteen months' suspension, resumed its course. 

It lasted three years in Italy, from 1526 to 1529, without inter- 1526-1529. 
ruption, but also without result ; it was one of those wars which ^^^^^g" 
are prolonged from a difficulty of living in peace rather than from 
any serious intention, on either side, of pursuing a clear and definite 
object. The chief events connected with this period are the syste- 
matic pillage of Italy by a lawless soldiery led on by Leyva, 
Bourbon and the Lutheran George Frondsberg, who wore habitually 
round his neck a gold chain, destined, he said, to strangle the pope. 
Bourbon was killed whilst leading on that rabble to the storming 
of Rome ; the captivity of the pope and the horrors of which the 
eternal city was the scene, excited universal indignation, and 
Francis I. thought the moment favourable to march into Italy 
troops which, a few months before, would have saved both Eome 
and Milan. Hampered for want of money, Lautrec could do 
nothing, and the plague moreover decimated his army. I^othing, 
however, would have been lost if the communications between Italy 
and France had remained open. But Francis committed the signal 
blunder of offending the Genoese Doiia, w^ho was admiral of the 
French fleet and who was considered as the first sailor of the age. 
The engagement of that foreigner had just terminated, and, of 
course, instead of renewing it, Doria employed against France his 
influence and his personal courage. Charles having accused the 
king of France of treachery, the latter, in his turn, called his rival 
a liar, challenged him to single combat, and allowed him the choice 
of weapons. But the era of great nations and great contests was 
beginning, and one is inclined to believe that Francis I. and Charles 
V. were themselves aware that their mutual challenges would not 

s 2 



26o History of France. 

rome to any personal encounter. The war which continued between 
them in Italy was not much more serious or decisive ; both sides 
•were weary of it, and neither one nor the other of the two sovereigns 
espied any great chances of success. The French army was wasting 
itself, in the kingdom of ITaples, upon petty inconclusive engage- 
ments ; its commander, Lautrec, died of the plague on the 15th of 
August, 1528 ; a desire for peace became day by day stronger ; it 
was made, first of all, at Barcelona, on the 20th of June, 1529, 
between Charles Y. and Pope Clement VII. ; and then a cunference 
was opened at Cambrai for the purpose of bringing it about between 
Charles Y. and Francis I. likewise. Two women, Francis I. 'a 
mother and Charles Y.'s aunt, Louise of Savoy and Margaret of 
Austria, had the real negotiation of it, and it was called accordingly 
the ladies^ peace. Though morally different and of very unequal 
worth, they both had minds of a rare order and trained to recognize 
political necessities and not to attempt any but possible successes. 
They did not long survive their work : Margaret of Austria died on 
the 1st of December, 1530, and Louise of Savoy on the 22nd of 
September, 1531. All the great political actors seemed hurrying 
away from the stage, as if the drama were approaching its end. 
Pope Clement YII. died on the 26th of September, 1534. He was 
a man of sense and moderation ; he tried to restore to Italy her 
independence, but he forgot that a moderate policy is, above all, 
that which requires most energy and perseverance. These two 
qualities he lacked totally ; he oscillated from one camp to the 
other without ever having any real influence anywhere. A little 
before his death he made France a fatal present ; for, on the 28th 
of October, 1533, he married his niece Catherine de' Medici to 
Francis I.'s second son. Prince Henry of Yalois, who by the death 
of his elder brother, the dauphin Francis, soon afterwards became 
heir to the throne. The chancellor, Anthony Duprat, too, the 
most considerable up to that time amongst the advisers of Francis L, 
died on the 9th of July, 1535. In the civil as well as in the 
military class, for his government as well as for his armies, Francis I. 
had, at this time, to look out for new servants. 

The ladies' peace, concluded at Cambrai in 1529, lasted up to 
1536 ; incessantly troubled, however, by far from pacific symptoms, 
proceedings, and preparations. In October, 1532, Francis I. had, 
and Henry g^^ Calais, an interview with Henry YIIL, at which they contracted 
a private alliance and undertook '' to raise between them an army 
of 80,000 men to resist the Turk, as true zealots for the good of 
Christendom." The Turks, in fact, under their great sultan 
Soliman II., were constantly threatening and invading eastern 



Invasion of Provence. 261 

Europe. Charles V., as emperor of Germany, was far more exposed 
to their attacks and far more seriously disquieted by them than 
Francis I. and Henry YIII. were ; but the peril that hung over 
him in the East urged him on at the same time to a further deve- 
lopment of ambition and strength ; in order to defend eastern 
Europe against the Turks, he required to be dominant in western 
Europe ; and in that very part of Europe a large portion of the 
population were disposed to wish for his success, for they required 
it for their own security. 

In 1536 all the combustibles of war exploded; in the month of A.D. 1536. 
Eebruarj'-, a French army entered Piedmont and occupied Turin ; p^gyg^^i^e" 
and, in the month of July, Charles V. in person entered Provence by 
at the head of 50,000 men. Anne de Montmorency, having Charles V. 
received orders to defend southern France, began by laying it 
waste in order that the enemy might not be able to live in it ; 
officers had orders to go everywhere and "break up the bake-houses 
and mills, burn the wheat and forage, pierce the wine-casks and 
ruin the wells by throwing the wheat into them t© spoil the water."- 
In certain places the inhabitants resisted the soldiers charged with 
this duty ; elsewhere, from patriotism, they themselves set fire tc 
their corn-ricks and pierced their casks. Montmorency made up 
his mind to defend, on the whole coast of Provence, only Marseilles 
and Aries ; he pulled down the ramparts of the other towns, which 
were left exposed to the enemy. For two months Charles Y. 
prosecuted this campaign without a tight, marching through the 
whole of Provence an army which fatigue, shortness of provisions, 
sickness and ambuscades were decimating ingloriously. At last he 
decided upon retreating. 

On returning from his sorry expedition, Charles V. learned that 
those of his lieutenants whom he had charged with the conduct of 
a similar invasion in the north of France, in Picardy, had met with 
no greater success than he himself in Provence. Queen Mary of 
Hungary, his sister and deputy in the government of the Low 
Countries, advised a local truce ; his other sister, Eleanor, the queen 
of France, was of the same opinion ; Francis I. adopted it ; and the 
truce in the north was signed for a period of three months. 
Montmorency signed a similar one for Piedmont. It was agreed 
tliat negotiations for a peace should be opened at Locate, in 
Roussillon, and that, to pursue them, Francis should go and take 
up his quarters at MontpeUier and Charles V. at Barcelona. Pope 
Paul III. (Alexander Farnese), who, on the 13th of October, 153i, 
had Pucceeded Clement VII., came forward as mediator. One Interview 
month afterwards, Charles and Francis met at Aigues-Mortes, and Mortes. 



262 History of France. 

these two princes "who had treated oiie another in so insulting a 
manner, exchanged protestations of the warmest friendship. The 
peace lasted six years. 

Francis I. was not willing to positively renounce his Italian 
conquests, and Charles V. was not willing to really give them up 
to him. Milaness was still, in Italy, the principal ohject of 
their mutual ambition. Navarre, in the south-east of France, 
and the Low Countries in the north, gave occasion for incessantly 
renewed disputes between them. The two sovereigns sought 
for combinations which would allow them to make, one to 
the other, the desired concessions, whilst stiU preserving pretexts 
for, and chances of, recovering them. Divers projects of marriage 
between their children or near relatives were advanced with that 
object, but nothing came of them ; and, after two years and a 
half of abortive negotiations, another great war, the fourth, broke 
out between Francis I. and Charles V., for the same causes and 
with the same by-ends as ever. It lasted two years, from 1542 to 
1544, with alternations of success and reverse on either side, and 
several diplomatic attempts to embroil in it the different European 
powers. Francis I. concluded an alliance in 1543 with Sultaa 
A.D. 1543. Soliman IL, and, in concert with French vessels, the vessels of the 
between pirate Barbarossa cruised about and made attacks upon the shores 
Francis I. of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, on the 11th of 
SoUmanlL February, 1543, Charles Y. and Henry YIII., king of England, 
concluded an alliance against Francis I. and the Turks. The 
unsuccess which had attended the grand expedition conducted by 
Charles V. personally in 1541, with the view of attacking Bar- 
barossa and the Mussulmans in Algiers itself, had opened his eyes 
to all the difficulty of such enterprises, and he wished to secure 
the co-operation of a great maritime power before engaging therein 
afresh. He at the same time convoked a German diet at Spires in 
order to make a strong demonstration against the alliance between 
Francis I. and the Turks, and to claim the support of Germany in 
the name of Christendom. Ambassadors from the duke of Savoy 
and the king of Denmark appeared in support of the propositions 
and demands of Charles V. The diet did not separate until it had 
voted 24,000 foot and 4000 horse to be employed against France, 
and had forbidden Germans, under severe penalties, to take service 
with Francis I. In 1544 the war thus became almost European, 
and in the early days of April two armies were concentrated in 
A.D. 1544. Piedmont, near the little town of Ceresole, the Spanish 20,000 
Battle of strong and the French 19,000 ; the former under the orders of the 
marquis del Guasto, the latter under those of the count d'Engliien : 



The Imperialists and the English in France. 263 

both, ready to deliver a battle which 'was, according to one side, to 
preserve Europe from, the despotic sway of a single master, and, 
according to the other, to protect Europe against a fresh invasiou 
of Mussulmans. 

The battle was bravely disputed and for some time indecisive, 
even in the opinion of the anxious Count D'Enghien, who was for 
a while in an awkward predicament ; but the ardour of the Gascons 
and the firmness of the Swiss prevailed, and the French army was 
victorious. This success, however, had not the results that might 
have been expected. The war continued ; Charles V. transferred The Ger- 
his principal efforts therein to the north, on the frontiers of the ^^ ^. , 
Low Countries and France, having concluded an alliance with invade 
Henry VIII. for acting in concert and on the offensive. Champagne rrance. 
and Picardy were simultaneously invaded by the Germans and the 
English ; Henry VIII. took Boulogne ; Charles V. advanced as 
far as Chateau- Thierry and threatened Paris. Great was the con- 
sternation there ; Francis I. hurried up from Fontainebleau and 
rode about the streets, accompanied by the duke of Guise and 
everywhere saying, " If I cannot keep you from fear, I wdl keep 
you from harm." " My God," he had exclaimed as he started fropi 
Fontainebleau, "how dear Thou sellest me my kingdom !" The 
people recovered courage and confidence ; they rose in a body ; 
40,000 armed militiamen defiled, it is said, before the king. The 
array arrived by forced marches, and took post between Paris and 
Chateau-Thier^J^ Charles V. was not rash ; he fell back to Crespy 
in Laonness, some feM"" leagues from his Low Countries, llegotia- 
tions were opened ; and Francis I., fearing lest Henry VIIL, being 
master of Boulogne, should come and join Charles V., ordered his 
negotiator, Admiral d'Annebaut, to accept the emperor's offers, 
" for fear lest he should rise higher in his demands when he knew 
that Boulogne was in the hands of the king of England." The 
demands were hard, but a little less so than those made in 1540; 
Charles V. yielded on some special points, being possessed beyond 
everything with the desire of securing Francis L's co-operation in 
the two great contests he was maintaining, against the Turks in 
eastern Europe and against the Protestants in Germany. Francis I. 
conceded everything in respect of the European policy in order to 
retain his rights over Milaness and to recover the French towns on 
the Sorame. Peace was signed at Crespy on the 18th of Sep-^jj jg^ 
tember, 1544; and it was considered so bad a one that the Peac3 of 
dauphin thought himself bound to protest, first of all secretly /I^'^^iox 
before notaries and afterwards at Fontainebleau, on the 12th of 
December, in the presence of three princes of the royal house. 



264 



History of France. 



This feeling "was so general that several great hodies, amongst 
others the parliament of Toulouse (on the 22iid of January, 1545), 
followed the dauphin's example. 

Francis I., in his life as a king and a soldier, had two rare pieces 
of good fortune : two great victories, Melegnano and Ceresole, 
stand out at the beginning and the end of his reign ; and in his 
direst defeat, at Pavia, he was personally a hero. In all else, as 
regards his government, his policy was neither an able nor a suc- 
cessful one ; for two and thirty years he was engaged in plans, 
attempts, wars, and negotiations ; he failed in all his designs ; he 
undertook innumerable campaigns or expeditions that came to 
nothing ; he concluded forty treaties of war, peace, or truce, inces- 
santly changing aim and cause and allies ; and, for all this inco- 
herent activity, he could not manage to conquer either the empire 
or Italy ; he brought neither aggrandizement nor peace to France. 

Outside of the political arena, in quite a different field of ideas 
and facts, that is, in the intellectual field, Francis I. did better and 
succeeded belter. In this region he exhibited an instinct and a 
taste for the grand and the beautiful ; he had a sincere love for 
literature, science, and art ; he honoured and protected, and 
effectually too, their works and their representatives. His reign 
occupies the first half of the century (the sixteenth) which has been 
called the age of Renaissance. Taken absolutely, and as implying 
a renaissance, following upon a decay of science, literature, and art, 
the expression is exaggerated ; it is not true that the five centuries 
which rolled by between the establishment of the Capetians and the 
accession of Francis I. (from 987 to 1615), were a period of intel- 
lectual barrenness and decay. It is in the thirteenth century, for 
instance, that we meet for the first time in Europe and in France 
with the conception and the execution of a vast repertory of different 
scientific and literary works produced by the brain of man, in fact 
with a veritable EncydopfBdia. Vincent of Beauvais, bom at 
Bea^^vais between 1184 and 1194, who died at his native place in 
1264, collected and edited what he called BiUioiheca Mundi, 
Sjyecidum majus {Libranj of the World, an enlarged Mirror), an 
immense compilation, the first edition of which, published at Stras- 
bourg in 1473, comprises ten volumes folio, and would comprise fifty 
or sixty volumes octavo. The work contains three, and, according 
to some manuscripts, four parts, entitled Speculum naturale {Mirror 
of Natural Science), Speculum MMoriale [Mirror of Historical 
Science), Speculum djyctrinale {Mirror of Metaphysical Science), 
and Speculum morale {Mirror of Moral Science). Each of these 
Sp^ecida contains a summary, extracted from the various writings 



Literature — The Schoolmen. 265 

which have reference to the subject of it, and the authors of which 
Vincent of Beauvais takes care to name. 

After the encyclopaedist of the middle ages come, naturally, their 
philosophers. They were numerous; and some of them have ■'■'^®^*'^°''^" 
remained illustrious, such as Gerbert of Aurillac, who became Pope 
Sylvester II., St. Anselm, Abelard, St. Bernard, Robert of Sorbon, 
founder of the Sorbonne, and St. Thomas Aquinas. To these 
names, known to every enlightened man, might be added many 
others less familiar to the public, but belonging to men who held 
a high place in the philosophical contests of their times, such as 
John Scot Erigena, Bjrenger, Roscelin, William of Champeaux, 
Gilbert de la Poree, &c. The questions which always have takea 
and always will take a passionate hold of men's minds, in respect 
of God, the universe and man, in respect of our origin, our naturt 
and our destiny, were raised and discussed, from the eleventh to 
the fifteenth century, if not with so much brilliancy, at any rate 
with as much boldness and earnest thought as at any other period. 
God, creator, lawgiver and preserver of the universe and of man, character 
everywhere and always present and potent, in permanent con- of their 
nexion, nay, communication, with man, at one tiuie by natural and ^'^^ ^^^' 
at another by supernatural means, at one time by the channel of 
authority and at another by that of free-agency, this is the point of 
departure, this the fixed idea of the philosopho-theologians of the 
middle ages. There are great gaps, great diversities, and great in- 
consistencies in their doctrines ; they frequently made unfair use of 
the subtle dialectics called scliolastics {la scolastique), and they fre- 
quently assigned too much to the master's authority [Vautorite du 
maitre) ; but Christian faith, more or less properly understood and 
explained, and adhesion to the facts, to the religious and moral pre- 
cepts, and to the primitive and essential testimonies of Christianity, 
are always to be found at the bottom of their systems and their 
disputes. Whether they be pantheists even or sceptics, it is in an 
atmosphere of Christianity that they live and that their thoughts 
are developed. On the other hand, speaking from the religious point 
of view, the Renaissance was but a resurrection of paganism dying 
out before the presence of the Christian world, which was troubled 
and perplexed but full of life and futurity. 

The religious question thus set on one side, the Renaissance was 
a great and happy thing, which restored to light and honour the 
works and glories of the Greek and Roman communities. The 
memorials and monuments of classical civilization, which were sud- 
denly removed, at the fall of the Greek empire, to Italy first and then 
from Italy to France and throughout the whole of Western Europe. 



266 History of France. 

impressed with just admiration people as well as princes, and 
inspired tliem with the desire of marching forward in their turn in 
thivS attractive and glorious career. 

It was not only in religious questions and by their philosopho- 
theologians that the middle ages, before the Renaissance, displayed 
their activity and fecundity. In literature and in art, in history 
and in poesy, in architecture and in sculpture, they had produced 
great and beautiful works which Avere quite worthy of surviving 
and have, in fact, survived the period of their creation. Here too 
the Eenaissance of Greek and Roman antiquity came in and 
altered the originality of the earliest productions of the middle 
ages and gave to literature and to art in France a new direction. 

The first amongst the literary creations of the middle ages is 
that of the French language itself. When we pass from the ninth 
to the thirteenth century, from the oath of Charles the Bald and 
Louis the Germanic at Strasbourg in 842, to the account of the 
conquest of Constantinople in 1203, given by Geoffrey de Yille- 
hardouin, seneschal of Champagne, what a space has been tra- 
versed, what progress accomplished in the language of France ! 
When the thirteenth century begins, the French language, though 
still rude and somewhat fluctuating, appears already rich, varied 
and capable of depicting with fidelity and energy events, ideas, cha- 
racters, and the passions of men. There we have French prose and 
French poesy in their simple and lusty youth ; the Conquest of 
Constantino])le by Goeffrey de Villehardouin, and the 8ong of 
Roland by the unknown poet who collected and put together in 
the form of an epopee the most heroic amongst the legends of the 
reign of Charlemagne, are the first great and beautiful monuments 
of French literature in the middle ages. 

The words are French literature ; and of that alone is there any 
intention of speaking here. It is with the reign of Francis I. that, 
to bid a truce to further interruption, we commence the era of the 
real grand literature of France, that which has constituted and still 
constitutes the pride and the noble pleasure of the French public ; 
several of the most illustrious of French writers, in poesy and prose, 
Eonsard, Montaigne, Bodin, and Stephen Pasquier, were born dur- 
ing that king's lifetime and during the first half of the sixteenth 
century ; but it is to the second half of that century and to the 
first of the seventeenth that they belong by the glory of their works 
and of their influence. 

The middle ages bequeathed to French literature four pi'ose- 
writers whom we cannot hesitate to call great historians : Yillehar- 
douin, Joinville, Froissart, and Commynes. Geoffrey de Villehar- 



Historians — Poetry. 267 

douin, after having taken part, as negotiator and soldier, in tlio 
crusade which terminated in the capture of Constantinople, and 
having settled in Thessaly, at Messinopolis, as holder of conside- 
rahle fiefs, with the title of marshal of Romania (Eoumelia), em- 
ployed his leisure in writing a history of this great exploit. Ha 
wrote with a dignified simplicity, epic and at the same time prac- 
tical, speaking hut little of himself, narrating facts with the preci- 
sion of one who took part in. them and yet without useless detail 
or personal vanity. Joinville wrote his Hidory of St. Louis at the joinville. 
request of Joan of Navarre, wife of Philip the Handsome, and five 
years after that queen's death : he was then eighty-five, and he 
dedicated his hook to Louis le Hutin (tJie quarreller), great grand- 
son of St. Louis. More lively and more familiar in style than Ville- 
hardouin, he combines the vivid and natural impressions of youth 
with an old man's fond clinging to the memories of his long life ; his 
narrative is at one and the same time very full of himself, without 
any pretension and very spirited without any show of passion, and 
fraught with a graceful and easy carelessness which charms the 
reader and all the while inepires confidence in the author's veracity. Froissart. 
Froissart is an insatiable pry who revels in all the sights of his 
day, events and personages, Wat's and galas, adventures of heroism 
or gallantry, and who is incessantly gadding about through all tho 
dominions and all the courts of Europe, everywhere seeking his 
own special amusement in the satisfaction of his curiosity. Philip de Commynes. 
Gommynes is quite another affair and far more than Froissart, nay 
than Joinville and Villehardouin. He is a politician proficient in 
the understanding and handling of the great concerns and great 
personages of his time. With the recital of events as well as the 
portrayal of character, he mingles here and there the reflections, 
expressed in precise, firm and temperate language, of a profound 
moralist, who sets before himself no other aim but that of giving 
his thoughts full utterance. 

Setting aside the language and poems of the troubadours of Poetry. 
southern France, we shall find, in French poesy previous to the 
Eenaissance, only three works which, through their popularity in 
their own time, still live in the memory of the erudite, and one only 
which, by its grand character and its superior beauties, attests the 
poetical genius of the middle ages and can claim national rights in 
the history of France. The Romance of the Rose in the erotic and 
allegorical style, the Romances of Renart in the satirical, and the 
Farce of Patelin, a happy attempt in the line of comedy, though 
but little known now-a-days to the public, are still and will remain 
subjects of literary study. The Song of Roland alone is an admi- 
rable sample of epic poesy in France, and the only monument 



268 History of France, 

of poetical genius in the middle ages which can have a claim to 
national appreciation in the nineteenth century. 

Such, in its chief works, philosophical, historical, and poetical, 
was the literature which the middle ages bequeathed to the reign of 
Trancis I. In history only, and in spite of the new character as- 
sumed afterwards by the French language, this literature has had 
the honour of preserving its nationality and its glory. Yillehar- 
douin, Joinville, Froissart, and Commynes have remained great 
writers. In philosophy and in poesy a profound revolution was 
approaching ; the religious reform and the fine literary genius, as 
well as the grand French language of the seventeenth century, were 
preparing to rise above the intellectual horizon. But between the 
moment when such advances dawn, and that when they burst forth 
there is nearly always a period of uncertain and unfruitful transi- 
tion : and such was the first half of the sixteenth century, that is 
to say, the actual reign of Francis I. ; it is often called the reign of 
the Renaissance, which certainly originated in his reign, but it did 
not grow and make any display until after him ; the religions, 
philosophical, and poetical revolution, Calvin, Montaigne, and 
Eonsard, born in the earlier half of the seventeenth century, did 
not do anything that exercised any power until the later. One 
single poet, a third-rate one, Clement Marot, attained lustre under 
Marot Francis I. Eabelais is the only great prose writer who belongs 
strictly to that period. The scholars, the learned critics of what 
had been left by antiquity in geiieral and by Greek and Roman 
antiquity in particular, Bude (Budseus), J. C. Scaliger, Muretus, 
Danes (Danesius), Amyot, Ramus (Peter la Eamee), Robert Estienne 
(Stephanus), Yatable (Watebled), Cujas, and Turnebius make up 
the tale of literature specially belonging to and originating in the 
reign of Francis I., just as the foundation of the College Royal, 
which became the College de France, is his chief personal claim to 
renown in the service of science and letters. 

Coming between Villon and Ronsard, Clement Marot rendered 
to the French language, then in labour of progression and, one 
might say, of formation, eminent service : he gave it a naturalness, 
a clearness, an easy swing, and, for the most part, a correctness 
which it had hitherto lacked. It was reserved for other writers, 
in verse and prose, to give it boldness, the richness that comes of 
precision, elevation and grandeur. 

During the reign of Francis I. and after the date of Clement 

Marot, there is no poet of any celebrity to speak of, unless we 

except Francis I. himself and his sister j and it is only in compli- 

euertte de "^^^'' **' royalty's name that they need be spoken of. We have 

Navarre, three collections of Marguerite's writings : 1. the Ht^tameron, ou 



Marguerite de Valois — Rabelais. 269 

les SejJt Journees de la Reine de Navarre, a collection of sixty-eight 
tales more or less gallant, published for the first time in 1558, 
witliout any author's name ; 2, her CEuvres poetiques, which ap- 
peared at Lyons in 1547 and 1548, in consequence of her being 
alive, under the title of Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Prin- 
cesses (the Pearls of tlie Pearl of Princesses), and of which one of her Her works, 
grooms-of-the-chamber was editor ; in addition to which there is a ^^ j^gj. 
volume of Poesies inedites, collected by order of Marguerite herself, brother, 
but Avritten by the hand of her secretary, John Frctte, and preserved 
at Paris amongst the manuscripts of the Bihliotheque nationale 
3. the Collection of her Letters, ^u\A\&\i%di in 1841, by M. F. Genin. 
This last collection is, morally as well as historically, the most 
Interesting of the three. As for Francis I. himself, there is little, 
if anything, known of his poesies beyond those which have been 
Inserted in the Documents relatifs a sa Ca/ptivlte a Madrid, pub- 
lished in 1847 by M. Champollion-Figeac ; some have an historical 
value, either as regards public events or Francis I.'s relations 
towards his mother, his sister, and his mistresses ; the most impor- 
tant is a long account of his campaign, in 1525, in Italy, and of 
the battle of Pavia ; but the king's verses have even less poetical 
merit than his sister's. 

Francis I.'s goodwill did more for learned and classical litera- 
ture than for poesy. He contributed to this progress, first by 
the intelligent sympathy he testified towards learned men of letters, 
and afterwards by the foundation of the College Roijal, an estab- 
lishment of a special, an elevated and an independent sort, where 
professors found a liberty protected against the routine, jealousy, 
and sometimes intolerance of the University of Paris and the 
6orbonne. 

We will not quit the first half of the sixteenth century and the 
literary and philosophical Eenaissance which characterizes that 
period, without assigning a place therein at its proper date and in 
bis proper rank to the name, the life, and the works of the man who 
was not only its most original and most eminent writer, but its 
truest and most vivid representative, Eabelais (born at Chinon in Rabelais. 
1495, died at Paris in 1553), Fran9ois Rabelais, the jolly vicar of 
Meudon, Alcofribas ISTasier, abstracteur de quintessence, as he styled 
himself. There is scarcely a question of importance that is not 
touched upon in his book (" La vie tres-horrifique du grand Gar- 
gantua, pere de Pantagruel "). The corruption of the clergy is 
denounced in the strongest terms ; the rights of conscience, the 
futility of those logomachies to which scholasticism had finally de- 
graded itself, the defects of absolute government, the necessity of 
educational reforms — all these points are discussed by Rabelais with 



2/0 



History of France. 



an amount of common sense which is only equalled by the origi- 
'^ nality of his style and the genial character of his wit. La Bruyere 

was quite right when he gave of the Gargantua his famous appre- 
ciation : — " oil il est mauvais, il passe bien loin au-dela du pire, 
c'est le charme de la canaille; ou il est bon, il va jusqu'a I'exquis et 
a I'excellent, il peut etre le mets des plus delicats." 
The Refer- Nearly half a century before the Reformation made any noise in 
mation, France, it had burst out with great force and had established its 
footing in Germany, Switzerland, and England. John Huss and 
Jerome of Prague, both born in Bohemia, one in 1373 and the 
other in 1378, had been condemned as heretics and burnt at Con- 
stance, one in 1415 and the other in 1416, by decree and in the 
presence of the council which had been there assembled. But, at 
the commencement of the sixteenth century, Luther in Germany 
and Zwingle in Switzerland had taken in hand the work of the 
Reformation, and before half that century had rolled by they had 
made the foundations of their new Church so strong that their 
powerful adversaries, with Charles Y. at their head, felt obliged to 
treat with them, and recognize their position in the European 
world, though all the while disputing their right. In England 
Henry VIII., under the influence of an unbridled passion, as all 
his passions were, for Anna Boleyn, had, in 1531, broken with the 
Church of Eome, whose pope, Clement YII., refused very properly 
to pronounce him divorced from his wife Catherine of Aragon, and 
the king had proclaimed hioiself the spiritual head of the English 
Church, without meeting either amongst his clergy or in his king- 
dom with any effectual opposition. Thus in these three States of 
Western Europe the reformers had succeeded, aud the religious 
revolution was in process of accomplishment. The nascent 
Reformation did not meet in France with either of the two 
important circumstances, politically considered, which in Germany 
and in England rendered its first steps more easy and more secure. 
It was in the cause of religious creeds alone, and by means of 
moral force alone, that she had to maintain the struggles in which 
she engaged. The questions raised by the councils of Bale and 
Florence and by the semi -political, semi-ecclesiastical assembly at 
Tours, which had been convoked by Louis XIL, the instructiou at 
the Parisian L^niversity, and the attacks of the Sorbonne on the 
study of Greek and Hebrew, branded as heresy, were producing a 
lively agitation in the public mind. Professors and pupils, scholars 
grown old in meditation, such as Lefevre of Etaples, and young 
folks eager for truth, liberty, action, and renown, such as William 
Earel, welcomed passionately those boundless and undefined hopes, 
those yearnings towards a brilliant and at the same time a vague 



The Reform atiott. 27 1 

future, at wMch they looked forward. Men, too, holding a social 
position very different from that of the philosophers, men with 
minds formed on an acquaintance with facts and in the practice 
of affairs took part in this intellectual and religious ferment, and 
protected and encouraged its fervent adherents. William Bri9on- 
net, bishop of Meaux, a prelate who had been Louis XII.'s ambas- 
sador to Pope Julius II., and one amongst the negotiators of 
Francis I.'s Concordat with Leo X., opened his diocese to the 
preachers and writers recommended to him by his friend Lefevre ^s helped 
of Etaples, and supported them in their labours for the transla- y^g ^g 
tion and propagation, amongst the people, of the Hohj Scriptures. Valois. 
They had at court, and near the king's own person, the avowed 
support of his sister, Princess Marguerite, who was beautiful, 
sprightly, aflfable, kind, disposed towards all lofty and humane 
sentiments as well as all intellectual pleasures, and an object of the 
sometimes rash attentions of the most eminent and most different 
men of her time, Charles V., the constable De Bourbon, Admiral 
Bonnivet, and Clement Marot. Marguerite, who was married to 
the Duke d'Alen9on, widowed in 1525, and married a second time, 
in 1627, to Henry d'Albret, king of E'avarre, was all her life, at 
Pau and at Nerac, as well as at Paris, a centre, a focus of social, 
literary, religious, and political movement. Luther and Zwingle 
had distinctly declared war on the papacy ; Henry VIII. had with 
a flourish separated England from the Romish Church ; Marguerite 

de Valois and Bishop Briconnet neither wished nor demanded so What the 

reioruicrs 
much ; they aspired no further than to reform the abuses of the warned. 

Eonaish Church by the authority of that Church itself, in concert 
with its heads, and according to its traditional regimen ; they had 
no idea of more than dealing kindly and even sympathetically with 
the liberties and the progress of science and hilman intelligence. 
Confined within these limits, the idea was legitimate and honest 
enough, but it showed want of foresight and was utterly vain. 

During the first years of Francis I.'s reign (from 1515 to 1520) 
young and ardent reformers, such as William Farel and his friends, 
were but isolated individuals, eager after new ideas and studies, 
very favourable towards all that came to them from Germany, but 
without any consistency yet as a party, and without having com- 
mitted any striking act of aggression against the Roman Church. 
Nevertheless they were even then, so far as the heads and the 
devoted adherents of that Church were concerned, objects of serious 
disquietude and jealous supervision. The Sorbonne, in particu- The Sop- 
lar pronounced vehemently against them. The syndic of thai ^^^^^- 



2/2 History of France. 

learned society, Noel Bedier or Beda, of whom Erasmus usod to 
say, " in a single Beda there are 3000 monks," had at court two 
pov/erful patrons, the king's mother, Louise of Savoy, and the 
chancellor, Duprat, both decided enemies of the reformers : 
Louise of Savoy, in consequence of her licentious morals and her 
thirst for riches ; Duprat, by reason of the same thirst, and of his 
ambition to become an equally great lord in the Church as in the 
State; and he succeeded, for in 1525 he was appointed arch- 
bishop of Sens. They were, moreover, both of them, opposed to 
any liberal reform, and devoted, in any case, to absolute power. 
Beaucaire dePeguilhem, a contemporary and most Catholic historian, 
for he accompanied the cardinal of Lorraine to the Council of 
Trent, calls Duprat " the most vicious of bipeds." 
Attitude of Against such passions the reformers found Francis I. a very 
Francis I. indecisive and very inefficient protector. " I wish," said he, " to 
give men of letters special marks of my favour." When deputies 
from the Sorbonne came and requested him to put down the publi- 
cation of learned works taxed with heresy, " I do not wish," he 
replied, " to have those folks meddled with ; to persecute those who 
instruct us would be to keep men of ability from coming to our 
country." But, in spite of his language, orders were given to the 
bifchops to furnish the necessary funds for the prosecution of here- 
tics, and, when the charge of heresy became frequent, Francis L 
no longer repudiated it : " Those people," he said, " do nothing 
but bring trouble into the State." 
Persecu" "^^^ defeat at Pavia and the captivity of the king at Madrid 

tions. placed the governing power for thirteen months in the hands of 

the most powerful foes of the Reformation, the Regent Louise of 
Savoy and the chancellor Duprat. They used it unsparingly, with 
the harsh indifference of politicians who will have, at any price, 
peace within their dominions and submission to authority. It was 
under their regimen that there took place the first martyrdom 
decreed and executed in France upon a partisan of the Reformation 
for an act of aggression and offence against the Catholic Church, that, 
we mean, of John Leclerc, a wool-carder at Meaux, followed, after a 
hrief interval, by the burning of Louis de Berquin, a gentleman of 
Artois. These two confessors of the Protestant faith were notable 
and vivid representatives of the two classes amongst which, in the 
sixteenth century, the Reformation took root in France. This move- 
ment had a double origin, morally and socially, one amongst the 
people, and the other amongst the aristocratic and the learned; it was 
not national, nor was it embraced by the government of the country. 



Francis I. and the Protestants. 273 

Persecution was its first and its only destiny in the reigii of Francis I,, 
and it went through the ordeal with admirable courage and patience \ 
it resisted only in the form of martyrdom. 

Marguerite alone continued to protect, timidly and dejectedly, 
those of her friends amongst the reformers whom she could help or 
to whom she could offer an asylum in Beam without embroiling 
herself with the king her brother and with the parliaments. 

During the long truce which succeeded the peace of Cambrai. Francis I. 
from 1532 to 1536, it might have been thought for a while that ggjf^tQ ^he" 
the persecution in France was going to be somewhat abated. Protestants 
Policy obliged Francis I. to seek the support of the protestants ^^^^^^^iJi^J^y' 
of Germany against Charles Y. ; he w^as incessantly fluctuating 
between that policy and a strictly catholic and papal policy ; by 
marrying his son Henry, on the 28th of October, 1533, to Catherine 
de' Medici, niece of Pope Clement VII., he seemed to have decided 
upon the latter course ; but he had afterwards made a movement 
in the contrary direction ; Clement YII. had died on the 26th of 
September, 1524; Paul III. had succeeded him; and Francis I. 
again turned towards the protestants of Germany ; he entered into 
relations with the most moderate amongst their theologians, with 
Melancthon, Bucer, and Sturm ; there was some talk of conciliation, 
of a re-establishment of peace and harmony in the Church ; nor 
did the king confine himself to speaking by the mouth of diploma- 
tists ; he himself w^rote to Melancthon. But whilst making all 
these advances to the protestants of Germany, he was continuing 
to proceed against their brother-Christians in France more bitterly 
and more flagrantly than ever. The last and most atrocious act of The Van- 
persecution which occurred in his reign was directed not against „ ^°"* 
f . . ., ^ ^ iUassscre 

isolated individuals but against a harmless population, the Vaudois, atCabrieres 

who had for three centuries maintained religious doctrines of a ^^^ Merin- 

strictly Evangelical character. In 1540, they had been condemned 

as heretics, but their peaceful habits, the purity of their manners, 

and the regularity with which they paid the taxes, had induced the 

king to countermand the execution of the sentence. In April 

1545, however, precise and rigorous orders were transmitted from 

the court to the parliament of Aix. Baron de la Garde, assisted 

by President d'Oppede and by the advocate-general Guerin, 

invaded suddenly at the head of an army the districts of Cabrieres 

and Merindol, chiefly inhabited by the Yaudois. 3000 of these 

unhappy men were massacred or burnt in their dwellings ; 660 

were sent to the hulks, and the rest, dispersed throughout the 

woods and mountains, perished of want and of fatigue. Within a 

radius of fifteen leagues not one tree, not one house was lelt 

T 



274 



History of France. 



standing. It is said that Francis I., when near his end, repented of 
this odious extermination of a small population, which, with his 
usual fickleness and carelessness, he had at one time protected, and 
at another abandoned to its enemies. Amongst his last words to 
his soil Henry II. was an exhortation to cause an inquiry to be 
made into the iniquities committed hy the parliament of Aix in 
this instance. It will be seen, at the opening of Henry II.'s 
reign, what was the result of this exhortation of his father's. 

It was quite clear that the reformation of the Church could be 
brought about only by a return to Gospel Christianity, and with 
Calvin, his this great movement the name of Calvin must ever be associated in 
^"rt'v^^^ France, as that of Luther is in Germany, and that of Zwingli in 
work. Switzerland. John Calvin, or Chauvin, Avas born at I^oyon in 1509. 

He received at Orleans lessons in Greek from the Lutheran Melchior 
Wolmar, who impressed him with his own views of the errors of 
the Eomish Church. The publication of a treatise On Clemency 
shortly after his conversion (1532), and in the midst of the per- 
secutions ordered by Francis I. against the first Huguenots, drew 
upon him some amount of notice. Shortly after he was publicly 
censured by the Sorbonne on account of a speech which he had 
composed for Nicolas Cop, rector of the University of Paris. 
Obliged to leave the metropolis, he found a refuge at Kerac. From 
thence he went first to Basle, where he published his great work 
*^InstituUonCh7-etienne" (1535); then to Geneva, where Farel detained 
him ; afterwards to Strasburg ; in that city he remained till the 
year 1541, when the inhabitants of Geneva recalled him in con- 
sequence of the defeat of his adversaries, who, under the name of 
Libertines, wanted to oppose the establishment of a severe form 
of ecclesiastical and political government. Calvin remained at 
Geneva till his death (1564), exercising unlimited authority, and 
displaying all the qualities not only of a divine and a pastoral 
adviser, but also of a stern civil ruler. As a reformer and a 
Source of legislator, Calvin owed his power to the energy of his mind, and 
his power, to the manner in which he interpreted the two conflicting prin- 
ciples — liberty and authority. Liberty is the form proposed by 
Calvin and the Eeformers ; religion, that is to say, legitimate 
obedience, is the substance. The Reformation might have dwindled 
into a negative protest ; it became a positive movement : instead of 
being a mere outburst of liberalism, it claimed a hearing as the 
pure exponent of Christianity, or, rather, this was its first character, 
and it steadfastly resisted every effort made to draw it away from 
this safe course. There were, during the sixteenth century, two 
classes of Eeformers. Some, whilst professing the utmost regard 



Calvin. 275 

for all the externals of religion (viz., Roman Catholicism), were 
busily but stealthily engaged in destroying Christianity; the 
others determined upon following the opposite direction. With 
them, forms were nothing; nay, they had become worse than 
nothing ; for they had accumulated like a mass of corrupt rubbish 
over the fair superstructure raised by Christ in the Gospel ; at any 
cost these excrescences must be cleared away. The war raged quite 
as fiercely between both classes of reformers, as between the 
reformers properly so called and the supporters of the hierarchy j 
it was a struggle for life and death, and when we consider the 
issue, we may boldly affirm that Protestantism, in a certain sense, 
saved Christianity. We go even farther than that — the seventeenth 
century is indebted to the Reformation for Pascal, Fenelon, 
Bossuet ; and Port- Royal is connected with Geneva, 

In 1547, when the death of Francis I. was at hand, that eccle- Catholics 
siastical organization of protestantism which Calvin had instituted Dalits'** *' 
at Geneva was not even begun in France. The French protestants 
were as yet but isolated and scattered individuals, without any bond 
of generally accepted and practised faith or discipline, and without 
any eminent and recognised heads. The Reformation pursued its 
course ; but a reformed Church did not exist. And this confused 
mass of reformers and reformed had to face an old, a powerful, and 
a strongly-constituted Church, which looked upon the innovators as 
rebels over whom it had every right as much as against them it had 
every arm. In each of the two camps prevailed errors of enormous 
magnitude and fruitful of fatal consequences ; catholics and pro- 
testants both believed themselves to be in exclusive possession of 
the truth, of all religious truth, and to have the right of imposing it Liberty of 
by force upon their adversaries the moment they had the power, coiiscience 
Both were strangers to any respect for human conscience, human 
thought, and human liberty. Those who had clamoured for this on 
their own account when they were weak had no regard for it in 
respect of others, when they felt themselves to be strong. On the 
side of the protestants the ferment was at full heat, but as yet 
vague and unsettled ; on the part of the catholics the persecution 
was unscrupulous and unlimited. Such was the position and such 
the state of feeling in which Francis I., at his death on the 31st of 
March, 1547, left the two parties that had already been at grips 
during his reign. He had not succeeded either in reconciling them 
or in securing the triumph of that which had his favour, and the 
defeat of that which he would have liked to vanquish. That was 
in nearly all that he undertook, his fate ; he lacked the spirit of 
sequence and steady persistence, and his merits as well as his defects 

i2 



276 



History of France. 



almost equally urged him on to rashly attempt that which he only 
incompletely executed. He was neither prudent nor persevering, 
and he may be almost said to have laid himself out to please every- 
body rather than to succeed in one and the same great purpose. 

It is said that at the close of his reign Er-mcis I., in spite of all 
the resources of bis mind and all his easy-going qualities, was much 
depressed, and that he died in sadness and disquietude as to the 
future. One may be inclined to think that, in his egotism, he was 
more sad on his own account than disquieted on that of his succes- 
sors and of France. However that may be, he was assuredly far 
from foreseeing the terrible civil war which began after him and the 
crimes as well as disasters which it caused. I^one of his more 
intimate circle was any longer in a position to excite his solicitude : 
his mother, Louise of Savoy, had died sixteen years before him 
[September 22, 1531] ; his most able and most wicked adviser, 
Chancellor Duprat, twelve years [July 29, 1535]. His sister Mar- 
guerite survived him two years [she died December 21, 1549], 
" disgusted with everything," say the historians, and " weary of 
life," said she herself. 

And yet Marguerite was loth to leave this world. She had always 
been troubled at the idea of death ; when she was spoken to about 
eternal life she would shake her head sometimes, saying: "All that 
is true; but we remain a mighty long while dead underground before 
arriving there." When she was told that her end was near, she 
considered " that a very bitter word, saying that she was not so old 
but that she might still live some years." She had been the most 
generous, the most affectionate and the most lovable person in a 
family and a court which were both corrupt and of which she only 
too often acquiesced in the weaknesses and even vices, though she 
always fought against their injustice and their cruelty. She had 
the honour of being the grandmother of Henry IV. 

Henry 11. had all the defects and, with the exception of personal 
bravery, not one amongst the brilliant and amiable qualities of the 
king his father. Like Francis L, he was rash and reckless in his 
resolves and enterprises, but without having the promptness, the 
fertility and the suppleness of mind which Francis I. displayed in 
getting out of the awkward positions in which he had placed him- 
self and in stalling off or mitigating the consequences of them. 
Henry was as cold and ungenial as Francis had been gracious and 
able to please : and whilst Francis I., even if he were a bad master 
to himself, was at any rate his own master, Henry II. submitted, 
without resistance and probably without knowing it, to the influence 
of the favourite who reigned in his house as well as in his court, 



Rebellion against the salt- tax. 277 

and of the advisers who were predominant in his government. Two 
facts will suffice to set in a clear light, at the commencement of the 
new reign, this regrettahle analogy in the defects and this profound 
diversity in the mind, character and conduct of the '-wo kings. 

Towards the close of 1542, a grievous aggravation ot the tax upon 
salt, called gahel, caused a violent insurrection in the town of 
Eochelle, which was exempted, it was said, hy its traditional privi- 
leges from that impost. Not only was payment refused, hut the 
commissioners were maltreated and driven away, Francis I. con- 
sidered the matter grave enough to require his presence for its 
repression. He repaired to Eochelle with a numerous body of 
lanzkuechts. The terrified population appeared to have determined 
upon submission, and they were let off for a fine of 200,000 francs, 
which the king gave to his keeper of the seals, Francis de Montho- 
lon, whom he wished to compensate for his good service. The 
keeper of the seals in his turn made a present of them to the town 
of Eochelle to found a hospital. But the ordinances as to the salt- 
tax were maintained in principle, and their extension led, some 
years afterwards, to a rising of a more serious character and very 
differently repressed. 

In 1548, hardly a year after the accession of Henry II. and in A.D. 1548. 
the midst of the rejoicings he had gone to be present at in the north ja^f^g^"^ 
of Italy, he received news at Turin to the effect that in Guienne, South of 
Angoumois and Saintonge a violent and pretty general insurrection ^^^^nce. 
had broken out against the salt-tax, which Francis I., shortly before 
his death, had made heavier in these provinces. The local authorities 
in vain attempted to repress the rising, and it was put down in the 
most terrible manner by constable de Montmorency. This insuiv 
rection was certainly more serious than that of Eochelle in 1542 ; 
but it is also quite certain that Francis I. would not have set about 
repressing it as Henry 11. did ; he would have appeared there him- 
self and risked his own person instead of leaving the matter to the 
harshest of his lieutenants, and he would have more skilfully inter- 
mingled generosity with force and kind words with acts of severity. 
And that is one of the secrets of governing. In 1549, scarcely a 
year after the revolt at Bordeaux, Henry II., then at Amiens, 
granted to deputies from Poitou, Eochelle, the district of Aunis, 
Limousin, Perigord, and Saintonge, almost complete abolition of the 
gahel in Guienne, which paid the king, by way of compensation, 
two hundred thousand crowns of gold for the expenses of war or the 
redemption of certain alienated domains. We may admit that on 
the day after the revolt the arbitrary and bloody proceedings of the 
constable de Montmorency must have produced upon the insurgents 



^/S 



History of France. 



i){ Bordeaux the effect of a salutary fright ; but we may doxxht 
ivbether so cruel a repression was absolutely indispensable in 1548, 
when in 1 549 the concession demanded in the former year was to 
be recognized as necessary. 

History must do justice even to the men whose brutal violence 
she stigmatizes and reproves. In the case of Anne de Montmo- 
xency it often took the form of threats intended to save him from 
the necessity of acts When he came upon a scene of any great 
confusion and disorder : " Go hang me such an one," he would 
i&ay ; " tie yon fellow to that tree ; despatch this fellow with pikes 
and arquebuses, this very minute, right before my eyes ; cut me 
in pieces all those rascals who chose to hold such a clockcase as 
this against the king ; burn me yonder village ; light me up a blaze 
everywhere, for a quarter of a mile all round." The same man 
paid the greatest attention to the discipline and good condition of 
his troops, in order to save the populations from their requisitions 
and excesses. A nephew of the constable de Montmorency, a 
young man of twenty-three, who at a later period became Admiral 
de Coligny, was ordered to see to the execution of these protective 
measures, and he drew up, between 1550 and 1552, at first for his 
Own regiment of foot and afterwards as colonel-general of this 
army, rules of military dibcipline which remained for a long while 
in force. 

There was war in the atmosphere. The king and his advisers, 
the court and the people, had their minds almost equally full of it, 
some in sheer dread, and others with an eye to preparation. The 
reign of Francis I. had ended mournfully ; the peace of Crespy had 
hurt the feelings both of royalty and of the nation ; Henry, now 
king, had, as dauphin, felt called upon to disavow it. It had left 
England in possession of Calais and Boulogne and confirmed the 
dominion or ascendancy of Charles V. in Germany, Italy and Spain, 
6n all the French frontiers. How was the struggle to be recom- 
menced 1 Two systems of policy and warfare, moreover, divided 
the king's council into two : Montmorency, now old and worn out 
in body and mind [he was born in 1492 and so was sixty in 1552], 
was for a purely defensive attitude, no adventures or battles to be 
sought, but victuals and all sorts of supplies to be destroyed in the 
provinces which might be invaded by the enemy, so that instead 
of winning victories there he might not even be able to live there. 
In 1536 this system had been found successful by the constable in 
causing the failure of Charles V.'s invasion of Provence; but in 
1550 a new generation had come into the world, the court, and the 
army; it comprised young men full of ardour and already dis- 



New generation of wafriors and politicians. 279 

tinguished for their capacity and valour \ Francis de Lorraine, duke 
of Guise [born at the castle of Bar, February 17, 1519], was thirty- 
one ; his brother, Charles de Guise, cardinal of Lorraine, was only 
six-and-twenty [he was born at Joinville, February 17, 1524] j 
Francis de Scepeaux [born at Duretal, Anjou, in 1510], who after- 
wards became Marshal de Vieilleville, was at this time nearly forty ; 
but he had contributed in 1541 to the victory of Ceresole, and 
Francis L had made so much of it that he had said on presenting 
him to his son Henry : " He is no older than you, and see what he 
has done already \ if the wars do not swallow him up, you will The new 
some day make him constable or marshal of France." Gaspard de ^f°^5^'^^" 
Coligny [born at Chatillon-sur-Loing, February 16, 1517], was warriors, 
thirty-three ; and his brother, Francis d'Andelot [born at Chatillon 
in 1521], twenty-nine. These men, warriors and politicians at one 
and the same time, in a high social position and in the flower of 
their age, could not reconcile themselves to the constable de Mont- 
morency's system, defensive solely and prudential to the verge of 
inertness; they thought that, in order to repair the reverses of 
France and for the sake of their own fame, there was something 
else to be done, and they impatiently awaited the opportunity. 

It was not long coming. At the close of 1551, a deputation of 
the protestant princes of Germany came to Fontainebleau to ask for 
the king's support against the aggressive and persecuting despotism 
of Charles V. Their request having been granted, the place of 
meeting for the army was appointed at Chalons-sur-Marne, March 
10, 1552 ; more than a thousand gentlemen flocked thither as 
voUmteers ; peasants and mechanics from Champagne and Picardy 
joined them ; the war was popular ; " the majority of the soldiers," 
says Rabutin, a contemporary chronicler, "were young men whose 
brains were on fire." Francis de Guise and Gaspard de Coligny 
were their chief leaders. The king entered Lorraine from Cham- 
pagne by Joinville, the ordinary residence of the dukes of Ouise. -^*ug^' 
He carried Pont-a-Mousson ; Toul opened its gates to him on the French.. 
13th of April ; he occupied JS^ancy on the 14th, and on the 18th 
he entered Metz, not without some hesitation amongst a portion of 
the inhabitants and the necessity of a certain show of military force 
on the part of the leaders of the royal army. At that time the 
emperor was lying ill at Inspruck, where he had gone for the pur- 
pose of watching more closely the deliberations of the council of 
Trent. On the point of being surprised in that city by Maurice of 
Saxony at the head of the Protestants, he signed with these the 
treaty of Passau, afterwards ratified at Augsburg (1552-55). Thea 
he came to besiege Metz, which the Duke of Guise successfully 
defended, displaying as much true courage as greatness of soul. 



28o History of France, 

During the next year (1553), Cliarlea V., anxious to avenge the 
cLeck which his forces had met with, invaded Artois, and burnt 
down the city of Therouanne, which has never since heen rebuilt. 
A short time after, his army was defeated at Eenty by Guise and 
Tuvannes. In the meanwhile, marshal Brissac was holding his 
ground in Piedmont ; Strozzi, a Florentine in the service of France, 
and Montluc, defended in turns the town of Sienna which, at last, 
was obliged to capitulate to the fierce Medichino ; the French fleet, 
commanded by Baron de la Garde, and combined with that of the 
Turks under the orders of Dragut, threatened the coasts of Calabria 
and of Sicily, ravaged the island of Elba, and captured some towns 
in Corsica, then belonging to the Genoese. 
Abdication These events decided Charles V. to abdicate. On the 25th of 
°^ October, 1555, and the 1st of January, 1556, he gave over to his 
son Philip the kingdom of Spain, with the sovereignty of Burgundy 
and the Low Countries, and to his younger brother Ferdinand the 
empire, together with the original heritage of the House of Austria ; 
he then retired personally to the monastery of Yuste, in Estrama- 
dura, there to pass the last years of his life, distracted with gout, 
at one time resting from the world and its turmoil, at another 
•vexing himself about what was doing there now that he was no 
longer in it. Before abandoning it for good, he desired to do his 
son Philip the service of leaving him, if not in a state of definite 
peace, at any rate in a condition of truce with France. Henry II. 
also desired rest ; and the constable de Montmorency washed above 
everything for the release of his son Francis, who had been a 
prisoner since the fall of Therouanne. A truce for five years was 
signed at Vaucelles on the 5th of February, 1556; and Colignj^, 
quite young still, but already admu-al and in high esteem, had the 
conduct of the negotiation. 
PhiliD II Philip II. continued his father's policy, and took measures for 
tis sue- promptly entering upon a fresh campaign. By his marriage with 
cesEor in jyj^ry Tudor, queen of England, he had secured for himself a 
marries powerful ally in the !N^orth ; the English parliament were but little 
^^T^ disposed to compromise themselves in a war Avith France ; but in 

March, 1557, Philip went to London ; the queen's influence and 
the distrust excited in England by Henry 11. prevailed over the 
pacific desires of the nation ; and Mary sent a simple herald to 
carry to the king of France at Rheims her declaration of war. 
A.D. 1558. Henry accepted it politely but resolutely. A negotiation was corn- 
Mary menced for accomplishing the marriage, long since agreed upon, 
mirries between the young queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart, and Henry II.'s 
the Dau- pon, Francis, dauphin of France. Mary, who was born on the 8th 
^ ^^* of December, 1542, at Falkland Castle in Scotland, had, since 



Treaty of Cdteau-Cambresis. 28 1 

1548, lived and received her education at the court of France, 
whither her mother, Mary of Lorraine, eldest sister of Francis of 
Guise and queen-dowager of Scotland, had lost no time in sending 
her as soon as the future union hetween the two children had been 
agreed upon between the two courts. The dauphin of France was 
a year younger than the Scottish princess; on the 19th of April, 
1558, the espousals took place in the great hall of the Louvre, and 
the marriage was celebrated in the church of !N"otre"Dame. From 
that time Mary Stuart was styled in France queen-dauphiness, and 
her husband, with the authorization of the Scottish commissioners, 
took the title of king-dauphin. 

In the meanwhile Henry 11. made an alliance with Pope Paul lY. a.D. 1567 
and sent two armies, one into the Netherlands, under the command Rattle of 
of Montmorency, the other into Italy, under that of the duke of Quentin. 
Guise. Montmorency was thoroughly defeated at Saint-Quentin 
by the duke of Savoy, Philibert Emmanuel (1557), and the French 
general himself remained in the power of the enemy. Fortunately, 
admiral Coligny held in check for seventeen days the victor before 
that town ; a circumstance which enabled the king to organise re- 
inforcements, and the duke of Guise to return from the kingdom of 
Naples, where the diike of Alva had resisted him with success. 
Guise saved France, not by attacking the Spaniards but by sur- 
prising Calais, which was, after eight days' siege, taken from the 
English, who had occupied it for the space of two hundred and 
eleven years. The news of this event was a death blow for Mary. 

Several other acts of hostility of not much moment took place in 
the Northern provinces ; the Duke de Guise made himself master 
of a few small towns, but on the other hand, the French general 
Thermes was defeated at Gravelines by the count of Egmont. At 
last, a treaty was signed at Cateau-Cambresis (1559) between . _ 
Henry II. and Elizabeth, who had become queen of England at Treaty of' 
the death of her sister Mary [November 17th, 1558] ; and next Cateau- ^ 
day, April 3rd, between Henry II., Philip II. and the allied princes 
of Spain, amongst others the prince of Orange, William the Silent, 
who, whilst serving in the Spanish army, was fitting himself to 
become the leader of the reformers and the liberator of the Low 
Countries. By the treaty with England, France was to keep Calais 
for eight years in the first instance, and on a promise to pay 
600,000 gold crowns to queen Elizabeth or her successors. The 
moliey was never paid and Calais was never restored, and this 
without the English government's having considered that it could 
make the matter a motive for renewing the war. By the treaty 
with Spain, France was to keep Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and have 



282 History of France. 

back Saint-Quentin, le Catelet and Ham ; but she was to restore to 
Spain or her allies a hundred and eighty-nine places in Flanders, 
Piedmont, Tuscany, and Corsica. The malcontents, for the absence 
of political liberty does not suppress them entirely, raised their 
voices energetically against this last treaty signed by the king. 
Opposition with the sole desire, it was supposed, of obtaining the liberation of 
^ " ^ Jiis two favourites, the constable De Montmorency and marshal de 
Saint-Andre, who had been prisoners in Spain since the defeat at 
Saint Quentin. "Their ransom," it was said, "has cost the kingdom 
more than that of Francis I." Guise himself said to the king, 
" A stroke of your Majesty's pen costs more to France than thirty 
years of war cost." Ever since that time the majority of his- 
torians, even the most enlightened, have joined in the censure that 
was general in the sixteenth century ; but their opinion will not 
be endorsed here : the places which France had won during the 
war, and which she retained by the peace, Metz, Toul, and Verdun 
on her frontier in the north-east, facing the imperial or Spanish 
possessions, and Boulogne and Calais on her coasts in the north- 
west, facing England, were, as regarded the integrity of the State 
and the security of the inhabitants, of infinitely more importance 
than those which she gave up in Flanders and Italy. The treaty 
of Cateau-Cambresis, too, marked the termination of those wars of 
ambition and conquest which the kings of France had waged 
beyond the Alps : an injudicious policy which, for four reigns, had 
crippled and wasted the resources of France in adventurous expe- 
ditions, beyond the limits of her geographical position and her 
natural and permanent interests. 
TheProtes- France was once more at peace with her neighbours, and seemed 

tants. — \^Q have nothinsc more to do tlian to gather in the fruits thereof. 

Develop- . 

ment of the -^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^®^ "^^^ midst questions far more difficult of solu- 

Befoima- tion than those of her external policy, and these perils from within 
'■°^' were threatening her more seriously than any from without. Since 

the death of Francis L, the religious ferment had pursued its course, 
becoming more general and more fierce ; the creed of the reformers 
had spread very much ; their number had very much increased ; 
permanent churches, professing and submitting to a fixed faith and 
discipline, had been founded ; that of Paris was the first, in 1555 ; 
and the example had been followed at Orleans, at Chartres, at 
Lyons, at Toulouse, at Eochelle, in ISTormandy, in Touraine, in 
Guienne, in Poitou, in Dauphiny, in Provence, and in all the pro- 
vinces, more or less In 1561, it was calculated that there were 
2150 reformed, or, as the expression then was, rectified (dressees), 
churches. It is clear that the movement of the Pie formation in the 



The principles of the Reforma'.ion spread. 283 

eixtecnth century was one of those spontaneous and powerful move- 
ments which have their source and derive their strength from the 
condition of men's souls and of whole communities, and not merely 
from the personal ambitions and interests which soon come and minglo 
with them, whether it be to promote or to retard them. One thing 
has been already here stated and confirmed by facts : it was specially Special 

in France that the Reformation had this truly religious and sincere character 

. 1 . . . of the 

character ; very'far from supporting or tolerating it, the sovereign FrenchRe- 

and public authorities opposed it from its very birth ; under formation. 
Francis I. it had met with no real defenders but its martyrs ; ajid 
it was still the same under Henry II. During the reign of 
Francis I., within a space of twenty-three years, there had been 1 

eighty-one capital executions for heresy; during that of Henry II., 
twelve years, there were ninety-seven for the same cause, and at 
one of these executions Henry II. was present in person on the 
space in front of I^otre-Dame : a spectacle which Francis I. had 
always refused to see. In 1551, 1557 and 1559 Henry II, by 
three royal edicts, kept up and added to all the prohibitions and 
penalties in force against the reformers. All the resources of 
French civil jurisdiction appeared to be insufficient against them. 
They held at Paris, in May, 1559, their first general synod; and 
eleven fully established churches sent deputies to it. This synod 
drew up a form of faith called the Galilean Confession, and like- 
wise a form of discipline. The king of ]N"avarre, Anthony de Protestant 
Bourbon, Prince Louis de Conde, his brother, and many other lords chieftains, 
had joined the new faith ; the queen of liTavarre, Jeanne d'Albret, 
in her early youth " was as fond of a ball as of a sermon," says 
Brantome, " and she had advised her spouse, Anthony de Bourbon, 
who inclined towards Calvinism, not to perplex himself with all 
these opinions." In 1559 she was passionately devoted to the faith, 
and the cause of the Reformation. With more levity but still in 
sincerity her brother-in-law, Louis de Conde, put his ambition and 
his courage at the service of the same cause. Admiral de Coligny's 
3'ounger brother, Francis d'Andelot, declared himself a reformer to 
Henry II. himself, who, in his wrath, threw a plate at his head and 
sent him to prison in the castle of Melun. Coligny himself, who 
had never disguised tlie favourable sentiments he felt towards the 
reformers, openly sided with them on the ground of his own per- 
sonal faith as well as of the justice due to them. At last the 
Reformation had really great leaders, men who had power and were 
experienced in the affairs of the world ; it was becoming a political 
party as well as a religious conviction ; and the French reformers 
were henceforth in a condition to make war as well as die at the 



284 History of France. 

stake for their faith. Hitherto they had been only helievers and 
martyrs ; they became the victors and the vanquished, alternately, 
in a civil war. A new position for them and as formidable as it 
was grand. 
A.D. 1559. Qjj i^Q 29th of June, 1559, a brilliant tournament was cele- 
killed in "a brated in lists erected at the end of the street of Saint- Antoine, 
tourna- almost at the foot of the Bastille. Henry II., the queen, and the 
°^^^ ■ whole court had been present at it for three days." The entertain- 

ment was drawing to a close. The king, who had run several tilts 
" like a sturdy and skilful cavalier," wished to break yet another 
lance, and bade the count de Montgomery, captain of the guards, 
to run against him. Montgomery excused himself; but the king 
insisted. The tilt took place. The two jousters, on meeting, 
broke their lances skilfully ; but Montgomery forgot to drop at 
once, according to usage, the fragment remaining in his hand ; he 
unintentionally struck the king's helmet and raised the visor, and 
a splinter of wood entered Henry's eye, who fell forward upon his 
horse's neck. He languished for eleven days and expired on the 
10th of July, 1559, aged forty years and some months. 




CHAPTER VIII. 
THE WAES OF EELIGIOK 



FRANCIS II. 1559 HENRY III. 1589, 

During the course, and especially at the close of Henry II. *s reign, Persecti* 
two rival matters, on the one hand the numbers, the quality, and ^^P^^ 
the zeal of the reformers, and on the other, the anxiety, prejudice, ^^^g p^o. 
and power of the catholics, had been simultaneously advancing in testants. 
development and growth. Between the 16th of May, 1558, and 
the 10th of July, 1559, fifteen capital sentences had been executed 
in Dauphiny, in !N"ormandy, in Poitou, and at Paris. Two royal 
edicts, one dated July 24, 1558, and the other June 14, 1559, had 
renewed and aggravated the severity of penal legislation against 
heretics. To secure the registration of the latter, Henry II., 
together with the princes and the officers of the crown, had 
repaired in person to parliament ; some disagreement had already 
appeared in the midst of that great body, which was then composed 
of a hundred and thirty magistrates ; the seniors who sat in the 
great chamber had in general shown themselves to be more inclined 
to severity, and the juniors, who formed the chamber called La 
Tournelle, more inclined to indulgence towards accusations of 
heresy. The disagreement reached its climax in the very presence 
of the king. Two councillors, Dubourg and Dufaure, spoke so 



racier. 



286 History of France. 

warmly of reforms which were, according to them, necessary and 
legitimate, that their adversaries did not hesitate to tax them 
with being reformers themselves. The king had them arrested 
and three of their colleagues with them. Special commissioners 
were charged with the preparation of the case against them. It 
has already heen mentioned that one of the most considerahle 
amongst the officers of the army, Francis d'Andelot, brother of 
Admiral Coligny, had, for the same cause, been subjected to a 
burst of anger on the part of the king. He was in prison at Meaux 
when Henry II. died. Such were the personal feelings and the 
relative positions of the two parties when Francis II. a boy of 
sixteen, a poor creature both in mind and body, ascended the 
throne. The constable de Montmorency and Henry II.'s favourite, 
Diana de Poitiers, were dismissed, the latter in a harsh manner, 
and the power remained in the hands of the Queen mother, Cathe- 
rine de' Medici, advised by the Guises. 
TheGuises, In order to give a good notion of Duke Francis of Guise and 
their cna- j^-g i^j-Q^ber the cardinal of Lorraine, the two heads of the house, 
we will borrow the very words of one of the men of their age who 
had the best means of seeing them close and judging them correctly, 
the Venetian ambassador John Mieh(ili. "The cardinal," he says, 
"who is the leading man of the house, would be, by common 
consent, if it were not for the defects of which I shall speak, the 
greatest political power in this kingdom. He has not yet completed 
his thirty-seventh year ; he is endowed with a marvellous intellect, 
which apprehends from half a word the meaning of those who con- 
verse with him ; he has an astonishing memory, a fine and noble 
face, and a rare eloquence which shows itself freely on any subject, 
but especially in matters of politics. He is very well versed in 
letters : he knows Greek, Latin, and Italian. He is very strong in 
the sciences, chiefly in theology. The externals of his life are very 
proper and very suitable to his dignity, which could not be said of 
the other cardinals and prelates, whose habits are too scandalously 
irregular. But his great defect is shameful cupidity, which would 
employ, to attain its ends, even criminal means, and likewise great 
duplicity, whence comes his habit of scarcely ever saying that 
which is. There is worse behind. He is considered to be very 
ready to take ofiPence, vindictive, envious, and far too slow in 
benefaction. He excited universal hatred by hurting all the world 
as long as it was in his power to do so. As for Mgr. de Guise, who is 
the eldest of the six brothers, he cannot be spoken of save as a man 
of war, a good officer, l^one in this realm has delivered more 
battles and confronted more dangers. Everbody lauds his courage, 



The Guises and their inflttence. 287 

liis vigilance, his steadiness in war, and bis coolness, a qnality 
wonderfully rare in a Frenchman. His peculiar defects are first of 
all stinginess towards soldiers ; then he makes large promises, and 
even when he means to keej) his promise he is infinitely slow 
about it." 

The Guises were, in the sixteenth century, the representatives ^^^'^'^^ 
and the champions of the difierent cliques and interests, religious govern- 
or political, sincere in their belitf or shameless in their avidity, and °^ent. 
all united under the Hag of LLe catholic Church. And so when 
they came into power, "there was nothing," says a protestant 
chronicler, "but fear and trembling at their name." Their acts of 
government soon confirmed the fears as well as the hopes they had 
inspired. During the last six months of 1559 the' edict issued by 
Henry II. from Ecouen was not only strictly enforced but aggra- 
vated by fresh edicts : a special chamber was appointed and chosen 
amongst the parliament of Paris, which was to have sole cognizance 
of crimes and oifences against the catholic religion. A proclamation 
of the new king Francis II. ordained that houses in which 
assemblies of reformers took place should be razed and demolished. 
It was " death to the promoters of unlawful assemblies for purposes 
of religion or for any other cause." Another royal act provided 
that all persons, even relatives, who received amongst them any one 
condemned for heresy, should seize him and bring him to justice, 
in default whereof they would suffer the same penalty as he. 
Individual condemnations and executions abounded after these 
general measures; between the 2nd of August and the 31st of TteHu- 
December, 1559, eighteen persons were burned alive for open f "rely* perl 
heresy, or for having refused to communicate according to the rites sscuted. 
of the Catholic Church or go to mass, or for having hawked about 
forbidden books. Finally, in December, the five councillors of the 
parliament of Paris whom, six months previously, Henry II. had 
ordered to be arrested and shut up in the Bastille, were dragged 
from prison and brought to trial. The chief of them, Anne Dubourg, 
was condemned on the 22nd of December, and put to death the 
next day in the Place de Greve. 

As soon as the rule of the catholics, in the persons and by the 
actions of the Guises, became sovereign and aggressive, the 
threatened reformers assumed attitude of defence. They too had 
got for themselves great leaders, some valiant and ardent, others 
prudent or even timid, but forced to declare themselves when the 
common cause was greatly imperilled. They ranged themselves 
round the king of Navarre, the prince of Conde, and Admiral de 
Coligny, and became under their direction, though in a minority, 



288 History of France. 

a powerful opposition, a"ble and ready, on the one hand, to narrowly 
watch and criticize the actions of those who were in power, and on 
the other to claim for their own people, not by any means freedom 
as a general principle in the constitution of the State, but free 
manifestation of their faith and free exercise of their own form 
of worship. 
Catherine Apart from, we do not mean to say above, these two great parties 
''"• which were arrayed in the might and appeared as the representatives 
of the national ideas and feelings, the queen-mother, Catherine de' 
Medici was quietly labouring to form another, more independent 
of the public, and more docile to herself, and, above all, faithful to 
the crown and to the interests of the kingly house and its servants ; 
a party strictly catholic, but regarding as a necessity the task of 
humouring the reformers and granting them such concessions as 
as might prevent explosions fraught with peril to the State. The 
constable De Montmorency sometimes issued forth from Chantilly 
to go and aid the queen-mother, in whom he had no confidence, but 
whom he preferred to the Guises. A former councillor of the par- 
liament, for a long while chancellor nnder Francis I. and Henry II, 
and again summoned, under Francis II., by Catherine de' Medici to 
the same post, Francis Olivier, was an honourable executant of the 
party's indecisive but moderate policy. He died on the 15th of 
March, 1560 ; and Catherine, in concert with the cardinal of Lor- 
raine, had the chancellorship thus vacated conferred upon Michael 
de I'Hospital, a magistrate already celebrated and destined to become 
still more so. 
A.D. 1660. A few months, and hardly so much, after the accession of Francis 
La Renau- jj^ ^ serious matter brought into violent collision the three parties 
attempt, whose characteristics and dispositions have just been described. 
The supremacy of the Guises was insupportable to the reformers and 
ii'ksome to many lukewarm, or wavering members of the catholic 
nobility. An edict of the king's had revoked all the graces and 
alienations of domains granted by his father. The crown refused 
to pay its most lawful debts ; and duns were flocking to the court. 
To get rid of them, the cardinal of Lorraine had a proclamation 
issued by the king, warning all persons, of whatever condition, who 
had come to dun for payment of debts, for compensations or for 
graces, to take themselves off within twenty-four hours on pain of 
being hanged ; and, that it might appear how seriously meant the 
threat was, a very conspicuous gibbet was erected at Fontainebleau 
close to the palace. This aifront led the Huguenots, assisted by the 
other malcontents, to form a scheme whereby the king should be 
seized, placed under a kind of surveillance, and the power of the 



La Renaiidie^s conspiracy. 289 

Lorraine princes destroyed for ever. Conde was evidently at the 
head of the plot, but the management of the whole affair was 
entrusted to a Perigord gentilhomme, Godefroid de Barry, sieur 
de la Renaudie. So extensive a conspiracy, and necessarily involv- 
ing the participation of a large number of accomplices, could not long 
remain secret. The court was then at Blois, and on rumours being 
spread abroad of the discovery of a plot, Francois de Guise suddenly 
removed the king to Amboise, which could more easily be defended 
against a coup de main, Tlie prince of Conde himself, though 
informed about the discovery of the plot, repaired to Amboise "Tumtilte 
without showing any signs of being disconcerted at the cold recep- i,/,;^' > 
tion offered him by the Lorraine princes. The duke of Guise, 
always bold, even in his precautions, " found an honourable means 
of making sure of him," says Castelnau, " by giving him the guard 
at a gate of the town of Amboise," where he bad him under watch 
and ward himself. The lords and gentlemen attached to the court 
made sallies all around Amboise to prevent any unexpected attack. 
On the 18th of March, La Renaudie, who was scouring the country, 
seeking to rally his men, encountered a body of royal horse who 
\vere equally hotly in quest of the conspirators ; the two detach- 
ments attacked one another furiously ; La Renaudie was killed, and 
his body, which was carried to Amboise, was strung up to a gallows 
on the bridge over the Loire with this scroll : " This is La Renaudie 
called La Forest, captain of the rebels, leader and author of the sedi- 
tion." The important result of the riot of Amboise (tumulie 
d' Amboise), as it was called, was an ordinance of Francis II., who, 
on the 17th of March, 1560, appointed Duke Francis of Guise "his 
lieutenant-general, representing him in person absent and present 
in this good town of Amboise and other places of the realm, with 
fuU power, authority, commission and especial mandate to assemble 
all the princes, lords, and gentlemen, and generally to command, 
order, provide, and dispose of all things requisite and necessary." 

The Guises made a cruel use of their easy victory : " for a v.'hole Cruelty of 
month," according to contemporary chronicles, " there was nothing *^^ Guises 
but hanging or drowning folks. The Loire was covered with 
corpses strung, six, eight, ten and fifteen, to long poles. . . ." It 
was too much vengeance to take and too much punishment to inflict 
for a danger so short-lived and so strictly personal. There was, 
throughout a considerable portion of the country, a profound feeling 
of indignation against the Lorraine princes. One of their victims, 
Villemongey, just as it came to his turn to die, plunged his hands 
into his comrades' blood, saying, " Heavenly Father, this is the blood 
of Thy children : Thou wilt avenge it !" John d'Aubigne, a nobie- 

u 



290 History of France, 

man of Saintonge, as he passed through Amboise one market-day 
with his son, a little boy eight years old, stopped before the heads 
fixed upon the posts and said to the child, " My boy, spare not thy 
head, after mine, to avenge these brave chiefs ; if thou spare thyself, 
thou shalt have my curse upon thee." The Chancellor Olivier him- 
self, for a long while devoted to the Guises, but now seriously ill 
and disquieted about the future of his soul, said to himself, quite 
low, as he saw the cardinal of Lorraine, from whom he had just 
received a visit, going out, " Ah ! cardinal, you are getting us all 
damned ! " 

On all sides there was a demand for the convocation of the states- 
general. The Guises and the queen-mother, who dreaded this great 
and independent national power, attempted to satisfy public opinion 
by calling an assembly of notables, not at all numerous, and chosen 
by themselves. It was summoned to meet on August 21, 1560, at 
Fontainebleau, in the apartments of the queen-mother. Some great 
lords, certain bishops, the constable De Montmorency, two marshals 
of France, the privy councillors, the knights of the order, the secre- 
taries of state and finance. Chancellor de I'Hospital and Coligny 
took part in it ; the king of Navarre and the prince of Conde did 
not respond to the summons they received ; the constable rode up 
with a following of six hundred horse. The cardinal of Lorraine 
having given his consent to the holding of the states-general, his 
opinion was adopted by the king, tiie queen-mother, and the 
assemblage. An edict dated August 26, convoked a meeting of 
They are the states-general at Meaux on the 10th of December following, 
convened. Meanwhile, it was announced that the punishment of sectaries 
would, for the present, be suspended, but that the king reserved to 
himself and his judges the right of severely chastising those who 
had armed the populace and kindled sedition, 
A T* T "ifiO "^^"^ elections to the states-general were very stormy ; all parties 
Death of displayed the same ardour ; the Guises by identifying tliemselves 
i'rancis II. more and more with the Catholic cause, and employing, to further 
its triumph, all the resources of the government ; the reformers by 
appealing to the rights of liberty and to the passions bred of sect 
and of local independence. Despite the entreaties of their staunchest 
friends, the king of I^avarre and Conde came to Orleans. The 
Guises who had sufficient proofs against the latter, caused him to 
be arrested as soon as he had entered the town, and wished to 
murder Kavarre whom they could not get rid of by legal means. At 
the appointed moment, however, FrauQois refused to give the signal, 
and so this part of the scheme failed. In the meanwhile a special 
commission had been named to try Conde ; his fate had been sealed 



Protestantism in Europe. 291 

"beforehand ; he was condemned to death, and would have certainly 
perished, had not the courageous L'Hospital refused to sign the sen- 
tence. Thus some time M^as gained, and as the king was on his 
death-bed a short delay proved the salvation of Conde's life. 
Francis II. died on the 5th of December ; he had reigned seventeen 
months. 

At the close of the fifteenth and at the commencement of the I*rot_es- _ 
sixteenth centuries, religious questions had profoundly agitated Europe. 
Christian Europe ; but towards the middle of the latter century 
they had obtained in the majority of European States solutions 
which, however incomplete, might be regarded as definitive. 
Germany was divided into Catholic States and Protestant States, 
which had established between themselves relations of an almost 
pacific character. Switzerland was entering upon the same 
course. In England, Scotland, the Low Countries, the Scandi- 
navian States, and the free towns their neighbours, the Eeforma- 
tion had prevailed or was clearly tending to prevail. In Italy, 
Spain, and Portugal, on the contrary, the Reformation had been 
stifled, and Catholicism remained victorious. It was in France 
that, notwithstanding the inequality of forces, the struggle between 
Catholicism and Protestantism was most obstinately maintained, 
and appeared for the longest time uncertain. 

Men were wonderfully far from understanding the principle of 
religious liberty in 15'60, at the accession of Charles IX., a child 
ten years old j around that royal child, and seeking to have the 
mastery over France by being masters over him, were struggling 
the three great parties at that time occupying the stage in the name 
of religion : the Catholics rejected altogether the idea of religious 
liberty for the Protestants ; the Protestants had absolute need of 
it, for it was their condition of existence ; but they did not wish for 
it in the case of the Catholics their adversaries. The third party 
(fiers parti), as we call it now-a-days, wished to hold the balance 
continually wavering between the Catholics and the Protestants, 
conceding to the former and the latter, alternately, that measure of 
liberty which was indispensable for most imperfect maintenance 
of the public peace and reconcilable with the sovereign power of 
the kingship. On such conditions was the government of 
Charles IX. to establish its existence. 

The new king, on announcing to the parliament the death of his CharlssIX. 
brother, wrote to them that " confiding in the virtues and prudence ^.^j.^^ °j[ 
of the queen-mother, he had begged her to take in hand the 
administration of the kingdom, with the wise counsel and advice 
of the king of Navarre, and the notables and great personages of 

u 2 



2Q2 



History of France. 



the late king's council." A few months afterwards the states- 
general, assembling first at Orleans and afterwards at Pontoise, 
ratified this declaration by recognizing the placing of " the 
young king Charles IX.'s guardianship in the hands of Catherine 
de' Medici, his mother, togetlier with the piincipal direction of 
affairs, but without the title of regent." The king of JS'avarre was 
to assist her in the capacity of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. 
Twenty -five members specially designated were to form the king's 
privy council. 

The queen-mother of France was, to use the words of the Vene- 
tian ambassador, John Michieli, who had lived at her court, " a 
woman of forty-three, of affable manners, great moderation, superior 
intelligence, and ability in conducting all sorts of affairs, especially 
affairs of State. As mother, she has the personal management of 
the king ; she allows no one else to sleep in his room ; she is never 
away from him. As regent and head of the government, she holds 
everything in her hands, public offices, benefices, graces, and the 
seal which bears the king's signature, and which is called the 
cachet (privy-seal or signet). In the council, she allows the others 
to speak ; she replies to any one who needs it ; she decides accord- 
ing to the advice of the council, or according to what she may have 
made up her own mind to. She opens the letters addressed to the 
king by his ambassadors and by all the ministers, . , . She has 
great designs, and does not allow them to be easily penetrated." 
The power really belonged to Catherine de' Medici, if she had only 
known how to keep it. She, however, merely took it away from 
the heads of the Guises, chiefs of the Catholic party, but did not 
make any use of it herself That Italian woman, adopting the 
old political principles of the Borgias, was incapable of holding the 
balance even between the energetic men who despised her ; she 
was out of her place in that epoch of strong persuasion, and 
L'Hospital himself could not carry out his ideas of strict imparti- 
ality — L'Hospital, that noble embodiment of wisdom which the 
storms of passion cannot shake. Guise soon recovered the influence 
he had lost at first, and the court rendered this easy for him by 
publishing the edicts of Saint Germain favourable to the Huguenots, 
and by admitting the divines of the Protestant persuasion to a 
solemn discussion at the colloque of Poissy. Whilst the Calvinists 
were revolting at I^ismes, the followers of the Duke de Guise 
massacred a company of Protestants at Yassy in Champagne (1562). 
The civil war was then begun. 

Prom 1561 to 1572 there were in France eighteen or twenty 
massacres of Protestants, four or five of Catholics, and thirty or 



** The Triumvirate^* and the Protestant association. 293 

forty single murders siiflficiently important to have been kept in 
remembrance by history ; and during that space of time formal 
civil war, religious and. partisan, broke out, stopped and recom- 
menced in four campaigns signalized, each of them, by great battles 
and four times terminated by impotent or deceptive treaties of 
peace, which, on the 24th of August, 1572, ended, for their sole 
result, in the greatest massacre of French history, the St. Bartho- 
lomew. 

The first religious war, under Charles IX., appeared on the The trium- 
point of breaking out in April, 1561, some days after that the duke ■'"a-te. 
of Guise, returning from the massacre of Yassy, had entered 
Paris, on the 16th of March, in triumph. The queen-mother, in dis- 
may, carried off the king to Melun at first, and then to Fontaine- 
bleau, whilst the prince of Conde, having retired to Meaux, sum- 
moned, to his side his relatives, his friends, and all the leaders 
of the reformers, and wrote to Coligny " that Ca.>sar had not only 
crossed the Eubicon, but was already at Eome, and that his 
banners were beginning to wave all over the neighbouring country." 
For some days Catherine and L'Hospital tried to remain out of 
Paris with the young king, whom Guise, the constable De Mont- 
morency and the king of .Navarre, the former being members and 
the latter an ally of the triumvirate, went to demand back from 
them. They were obliged to submit to the pressure brought to 
bear upon them. The constable was the first to enter Paris, and 
went, on the 2nd of April, and burnt down the two places of 
worship which, by virtue of the decree of January 17, 1561, had 
been granted to the Protestants. I^ext day the king of Navarre 
and the duke of Guise, in their turn, entered the city in company 
with Charles IX. and Catherine. A council was assembled at the 
Louvre to deliberate as to the declaration of war, which was 
deferred. Whilst the king was on his way back to Paris, Conde 
hurried off to take up his quarters at Orleans, whither Coligny association 
went promptly to join him. They signed with the gentlemen who of the Pro- 
came to them from all parts a compact of association " for the -j^|g^ 
honour of God, for the liberty of the king, his brothers and the 
queen-mother, and for the maintenance of decrees ; " and Conde, 
in writing to the protestant princes of Germany to explain to them 
his conduct, took the title of 'protector of the house and croton of 
France. Negotiations still went on for nearly three months. The 
chiefs of the two parties attempted to offer one another generous 
and pacific solutions ; they even had two interviews ; but Catherine 
was induced by the Catholic triumvirate to expressly declare that 
she could not allow in France more than one single form of 



294 



History of France. 



AD. 1562. 
Battle of 
Sreux 
(Dee. 19). 



A.D. 1563. 

The Due 
de 'Guise 
shot 



worship. Conde and his friends said that they conld not lay 
down their arms until the triumvirate was overthrown, and the 
execution of decrees granting them liherty of worship, in certain 
places and to a certain extent, had been secured to them. IsTeither 
party liked to acknowledge itself beaten in this way, without having 
struck a blow. 

On both sides was displayed equal enthusiasm ; the first armies 
that were raised distinguished themselves by the utmost strictness ; 
no debauchery, no gambling, no swearing ; religious worship morn- 
ing and evening. But under these externals of piety the hearts 
retained all their cruelty. Montluc, governor of Guienne, went 
about accompanied by a band of executioners. He says himself in 
his memoirs : " on pouvoit cognoistre par ou il etoit passs, car par 
les arbres sur les chemins on en trouvoit les enseignes." In the pro- 
vince of Dauphine, a Protestant chieftain, baron des Adrets, retali- 
ated in the most cruel manner. He obliged his prisoners to throw 
themselves down from the top of a high tower on the pikes and 
spears of his soldiers. 

Guise was, first, conqueror at Dreux; he made a prisoner of Conde, 
general of the Protestant army, and gave on that occasion proofs of 
a generosity which could scarcely have been expected under such 
circumstances. He shared his bed with his captive, " and so," says 
La ]S"oue, " these two great princes, who were like mortal foes, 
found themselves in one bed, one triumphant and the other captive, 
taking their repast together." 

The results of the battle of Dreux were serious, and still more 
serious from the fate of the chiefs than from the number of 
the dead. The commanders of the two armies, the constable 
De Montmorency and the prince of Conde, were wounded and 
prisoners. One of the triumvirs, Marshal de Saint-Andre, had 
been killed in action. The Catholics' wavering ally, Anthony de 
Bourbon, king of Navarre, had died before the battle of a wound 
which he had received at the siege of Eouen ; and on his death- 
bed had resumed his protestant bearing, saying that, if God 
granted him grace to get well, he would have nothing but the 
Gospel preached throughout the realm. The two staffs (etats- 
majors), as we should now say, Avere disorganized : in one, the 
duke of Guise alone remained unhurt and at liberty \ in the other, 
Coligny, in Conde's absence, was elected general-in-chief of the 
Protestants. Orleans was at that time the principal stronghold of 
the Protestant party ; it would certainly have been taken but for 
the assassination of Guise whom the protestant gentleman Poltrot 
de Mere shot in the most treacherous manner (_1563). Whatever 



Guise murdered. — ^Peacc of Amboist. 295 

may have been the ambition of that celebrated man, it is impossible 
not to feel some respect for him, who addressed to his murderer 
the following noble words : " Or 911, je veux vous montrer combien 
la religion que je tiens est plus douce que celle de quoi vous failes 
profession : la votre vous a conseille de me tuer sans m'ouir, 
n'ayant re9u de moi aucune offense ; et la mieane me commande 
que je vous pard.onne, tout convaincu que vous etes de m'avoir 
vouki tuer sans raison." Arrested, removed to Paris, put to the Arrest and 
torture and questioned by the commissioners of parliament, Pol- ^P^^^™"^^' 
trot at one time confirmed and at another disavowed his original Pol trot de 
assertions. Coligny, he said, had not suggested the project to ^^^^• 
him, but had cognizance of it, and had not attempted to deter him. 
The decree sentenced Poltrot to the punishment of regicides. He 
underwent it on the 18th of March, 1563, in the Place de Greve, 
preserving to the very end that fierce energy of hatred and ven- 
geance which had prompted his deed. He was heard saying to 
himself in the midst of his torments and as if to comfort himself, 
" For all that, he is dead and gone — the persecutor of the faithful, 
and he will not come back again." The angry populace insulted 
him with yells ; Poltrot added, " If the persecution does not cease, 
vengeance will fall upon this city, and the avengers are already at 
hand." 

Catherine de' Medici, well pleased, perhaps, that there was now 
a question personally embarrassing for the admiral and as yet in 
abeyance, had her mind entirely occupied apparently with the 
additional weakness and difficulty resulting to the position of the 
crown and the Catholic party from the death of the duke of Guise j 
she considered peace necessary ; and, for reasons of a different 
nature, Chancellor de I'Hospital was of the same opinion : he drew 
attention to " scruples of conscience, the perils of foreign influence, 
and the impossibility of curing by an application of brute force a 
malady concealed in the very bowels and brains of the people." 
^Negotiations were entered into with the two captive generals, the A.D. 1563. 
prince of Conde and the constable De Montmorency ; they assented ^®*^®."*^ 
to that policy ; and, on the 19th of March, peace was concluded at 
Amboise in the form of an edict which granted to the Protestants 
the concessions recognized as indispensable by the crown itself, and 
regulated the relations of the two creeds, pending " the remedy of 
time, the decisions of a holy council, and the king's majority." 
Liberty of conscience and the practice of the religion " called 
reformed " were recognized " for all barons and lords high-justiciary, 
in tlieir houses, with their families and dependants ; for nobles 
having fiefs without vassals and living on the king's lands, but for 



2g6 



History of France. 



them and their families personally." The burgesses were treated 
less favourably ; the reformed worship was maintained in the 
towns in which it had been practised up to the 7th of March in 
the current year; but beyond that and noblemen's mansions, this 
worship might not be celebrated, save in the faubourgs of one 
single town in every bailiwick or seneschalty. Paris and its 
district were to remain exempt from any exercise "of the said 
reformed religion." 

During the negotiations, and as to the very basis of the edict of 
March 19, 1563, the Protestants were greatly divided : the soldiers 
of and the politicians, with Conde at their head, desired peace, and 
thought that the concessions made by the Catholics ought to be 
accepted. The majority of the reformed pastors and theologians 
cried out against the insufficiency of the concessions, and were 
astonished that there should be so much hurry to make peace 
when the Catholics had just lost their most formidable captain. 
It was not long before facts put the malcontents in the right. 
Between 1563 and 1567 murders of distinguished Protestants 
increased strangely, and excited amongst their families anxiety 
accompanied by a thirst for vengeance. The Guises and their 
party, on their side, persisted in their outcries for proceedings 
against the instigators, known or presumed, of the murder of Duke 
Francis. It was plainly against Admiral de Coligny that these 
cries were directed ; the king and the queen-mother could find no 
other way of stopping an explosion than to call the matter on 
before the privy council and cause to be there drawn up, on the 
29th of January, 1566, a solemn decree "declaring the admiral's 
innocence on his own affirmation, given in the presence of the 
king and the council as before God himself, that he had not had 
anything to do with or approved of the said homicide." Silence 
for all time to come was consequently imposed upon the attorney- 
general and everybody else; inhibition and prohibiiion were issued 
against the continuance of any investigation or prosecution. 

At the same time that the war was proceeding amongst the 
provinces with this passionate doggedness, royal decrees were 
alternately confirming and suppressing or weakening the securities 
for liberty and safety which the decree of Amboise, on the 19th of 
March, 1563, had given to the Protestants by way of re-establishing 
peace. It was a series of contradictory measures which were 
sufficient to show the party-btrife still raging in the heart of the 
government. Even Conde could not deh^de himself any longer : 
the preparations were for war against the reformers. He quitted 
tiic court to take his stand again with his own pai'ty. Coligny, 



Second and third religious wars. 297 

D'Andelot, La Rochefoucauld, La Xoue, and all the accredited 

leaders amongst the Protestants, whom his behaviour, too full of 

confidence or of complaisance towards the court, had shocked or 

disquieted, went and joined him. In September, 1567, the second A D. 1567. 

religious war broke out. econ re- 

o _ _ ligious 

It was short and not decisive for either party. At the outset of war. 

the campaign, success was with the Protestants ; ' forty towns, 

Orleans, Montereau, Lagny, Montauban, Castres, Montpellier, 

Uzes, &c., opened their gates to them or fell into their hands. 

They were within an ace of surprising the king at Monceaux, and 

he never forgot, says Montluc, that " the Protestants had made him 

do the stretch from Meaux to Paris at something more than a 

walk." Defeated at St. Denis (November 10, 1567), but still 

powerful, Coligny and Conde imposed upon the court the peace 

of Longjumeau (1568 ; ^aix hoiteuse ou mal assise) confirming the 

terras of that of Amboise. 

Scarcely six months having elapsed, in August, 1568, the third A.D. 1568. 

religious war broke out. The written guarantees given in the Third reli- 
. , 00 gious war. 

treaty of Longjumeau xor security and liberty on behalf of the 

Protestants were misinterpreted or violated. Massacres and mur- 
ders of Protestants became more numerous, and were committed 
with more impunity than ever : in 1568 and 1569, at Amiens, at 
Auxerre, at Orleans, at Rouen, at Bourges, at Troyes, and at Blois, 
Protestants, at one time to the number of 140 or 120, or 53, or 40, 
and at another singly, with just their wives and children, were 
massacred, burnt, and hunted by the excited populace, without 
any intervention on the part of the magistrates to protect them or 
to punish their murderers. The contemporar}'^ protestant chroniclers 
set down at ten thousand the number of victims who perished in 
the course of these six months which were called a time of peace : 
we may, with De Thou, believe this estimate to be exaggerated, 
but, without doubt, the peace of Longjumeau Avas a lie, even 
before the war began again. 

The queen-mother attempted to take possession of the two 
Protestant leaders ; Conde, however, managed to enter La Rochelle. 
The protestant nobles of Saintonge and Poitou flocked in. A royal Jeanne 
ally was announced ; the queen of i^avarre, Jeanne d'Albret, was . .^^ ^^ 
bringing her son Henry, fifteen years of age, whom she was training Protes- 
up to be Henry IV. Conde went to meet them, and, on the 28th taints, 
of September, 1568, all this flower of French Protestantism was 
assembled at La Rochelle, ready and resolved to strike another 
blow for the cause of religious liberty. 

It was the longest and most serious of the four wars of tMs kind 



298 History of France. 

•R-Mch so profoundly agitated France in the reign of Charles IX, 
This one lasted from the 24th of August, 1568, to the 8th of August, 
1570, between the departure of Conde and Coligny for La 
Eochelle and the treaty of peace of St. Germain-en-Laye : a hollow 
peace, like the rest, and only two years before the St. Bartholomew. 
On starting from Noyers with Coligny, Conde had addressed to 
tlie king, on the 23rd of August, a letter and a request wherein 
"after having set forth the grievances of the reformers, he attributed 
all the mischief to the cardinal of Lorraine, and declared that the 
protestant nobles felt themselves constrained, for the safety of the 
realm, to take up arms against that infamous priest, that tiger of 
France, and against his accomplices." He bitterly reproached the 
Guises *' with treating as mere poUcists, that is, men who sacrifice 
religion to temporal interests, the Catholics inclined to make con- 
cessions to the reform^ers, especially the chancellor De I'Hospital 
and the sons of the late constable De Montmorency. The Guises, 
indeed, and their friends, did not conceal their distrust of De I'Hos- 
pital, any more than he concealed his opposition to their deeds and 
I'Hospital their designs. Convinced that he would not succeed in preserving 
from Bub- r^^^*^6 from a fresh civil war, the chancellor made up his mind to 
lie life. withdraw, and with him all moderation departed from the councils 
of the king. 

During the two years that it lasted, from August, 1568, to 
August, 1570, the third religious war under Charles IX. entailed 
two important battles and many deadly faction-fights which spread 
and inflamed to the highest pitch the passions of the two parties. 
Notwithstanding their defeat at Jarnac and Moncontour (1569), 
notwithstanding the death of Conde and the wound of Coligny, 
the Protestants were still able to obtain from their enemies a favour- 
able peace. The negotiations were short. The war had been 
going on for two years. The two parties, victorious and vanquished 
by turns, were both equally sick of it. In vain did Philip II., 
king of Spain, offer Charles IX. an aid of nine thousand men to 
continue it. .In vain did Pope Pius V. write to Catherine de' 
Medici, " as there can be no communion between Satan and the 
children of the light, it ought to be taken for certain that there can 
be no compact between Catholics and heretics, save one full of 
fraud and feint." " We had beaten our enemies," says Montluc, 
" over and over again ; but notwithstanding that, they had so 
much influence in the king's council, that the decrees were always 
A.D. 1570. to their advantage. We won by arms, but they won by those 
S^^Ger- devils of documents." Peace was concluded at St. Gerraain-en-Laye 
main. on the 8th of August, 1570, and it was more equitable and better 



Marriage of Henry of Navarre. 299 

for the reformers than the preceding treaties ; for, besides a pretty 
large exteaisiou as regarded free exercise of their worship and their 
civil rights in the State, it granted " for two years, to the princes 
of JSTavarrc and Conde and twenty noblemen of the religion, who 
were appointed by the king, the wardenship of the towns of La 
Eochelle, Cognac, Montaiiban, and La Charite, whither those of the 
religion who dared not return so soon to their own homes might 
retire." All the members of the parliament, all the royal and 
municipal officers and the principal inhabitants of the towns where 
the two religions existed were further bound over on oath " to 
maintenance of the edict." 

Peace was made ; but it was the third in seven years, and very 
shortly after each new treaty civil war had recommenced. No 
more was expected from the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye than 
had been effected by those of Amboise and Longjumeau, and on 
both sides men sighed for something more stable and definitive. 
By what means to be obtained, and with what pledges of dura- 
bility 1 

There had already, thirteen or fourteen years previously, been Henry cf 
some talk about a marriage between Henry of Navarre and Mar- Navaire 
guerite de Yalois, each born in 1553. This union between the two im^x- 
branches of the royal house, one catholic and the other protestant, guerite de 
ought to have been the most striking sign and the surest pledge of "^^°^^» 
peace between Catholicism and Protestantism. The political expe- 
diency of such a step appeared the more evident and the more 
urgent, in proportion as the religious war had become more direful, 
and the desire for peace more general. Charles IX. embraced 
the idea passionately, being the only means, he said, of putting a 
stop at last to this incessantly renewed civil war, which was the 
plague of his life as well as of his kingdom. A fact of a personal Charles IX. 
character tended to mislead Coligny. By his renown, by the ijguy 
loftiness of his views, by the earnest gravity of his character and 
his language, he had produced a great effect upon Charles IX., a 
young king of warm imagination and impressible and sympathetic 
temperament, but, at the same time, of weak judgment. He readily 
gave way, in Coligny's company, to outpourings which had all 
the appearance of perfect and involuntary frankness ; and even, 
seemed to entertain seriously the idea of sending an army to the 
relief of the persecuted Protestants in the Netherlands. This tone 
of freedom and confidence had inspired Coligny with reciprocal 
confidence ; he believed himself to have a decisive influence over 
the king's ideas and conduct ; and when the Protestants testified 
their distrust upon this subject, he reproached them vehemently for 



300 History of France. 

it ; he affirmed tlie king's good intentions and sincerity ; and he 

considered himself in fact, said Catherine de' Medici with temper, 

*' a second king of France." 

How much sincerity was there about these outpourings of Charles 

IX. in his intercourse with Coligny and how much reality in the 

„ ^^ ^ admiral's influence over the kin"; % We are touching? upon that 
massacre ^ o i 

on St. Bar- great historical question which has been so much disputed : was 

tholomew's ^j^^ St. Bartholomew a design, long ago determined upon and 
day pre- & j o o , r 

meditated prepared for, of Charles IX. and his government, or an almost 
or not ? sudden resolution, brought about by events and the situation of 
the moment, to which Charles IX. was egged on, not without diffi- 
culty, by his mother Catherine and his advisers % 

"Without giving either to Catherine de' Medici or to her sons the 
honour of either so long a course of dissimulation or of so cunningly 
arranged a stratagem, it is not unnatural to believe that whilst con- 
ceding the advantageous terms of the peace of Saint-Germain, they 
looked forward ultimately to something like the horrible tragedy 
of Saint Bartholomew's day ; and yet we may reasonably question 
even if the massacre would have taken place, had not the Catholics 
dreaded the influence which Coligny seemed about to assume over 
the weak mind of the king. Catherine and the Duke d'Anjou in 
their turn, and as a last resource, worked u^ion the feelings of that 
wretched monarch, and finally led him to sanction the massacre of 
the Protestants just as easily as he would have done that of the 
principal Catholic leaders. 
Cor' ^^^ Friday the 22ud of August, 1572, Coligny was returning on 

wounded foot from the Louvre to the Eue des Fosses-St.-Germain-l'Auxerrois, 
(Aug. 22). -vrhere he lived; he was occupied in reading a letter, which he had 
just received ; a shot, fired from the window of a house in the 
cloister of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, smashed two fingers of his right 
hand and lodged a ball in his left arm ; he raised his eyes, pointed 
out with his injured hand the house whence the shot had come, 
and reached his quarters on foot. Two gentlemen who were in 
attendance upon him rushed to seize the murderer ; it was too late ; 
Maurevert had been lodging there, and on the watch for three days 
at the house of a canon, an old tutor to the duke of Guise ; a horse 
from the duke's stable was waiting for him at the back of the 
house ; and, having done his job, he departed at a gallop. He was 
pursued for several leagues without being overtaken. 

Coligny sent to apprise the king of what had just happened to 
Wm : " There," said he, " was a fine proof of fidelity to the 
agreement between him and the duke of Guise." " I «hall never 
have rest, then ! " cried Charles, breaking the stick witti which he 



Coligny murdered. 30 1 

was playing tennis with the duke of Guise and Teligny, the 
admiral's son-in-law ; and he immediately returned to his room. 
The duke of Guise took himself off without a word. Teligny 
speedily joined his father-in-law. Ambrose Pare had already 
attended to him, cutting off the two broken fingers ; somebody 
expressed a fear that the balls might have been poisoned ; " It will 
be as God pleases as to that," said Coligny ; and, turning towards 
the minister, Merlin, who had hurried to him, he added, " pray 
that He may grant me the gift of perseverance." ToM^ards mid-day, ^is inter* 
Marshals de Damville, De Cosse, and De Yillars went to see him Damville 
" out of pure friendship," they told him, " and not to exhort him Cosce and 
to endure his mishap with patience : we know that you will not ^ ^ ^^^' 
lack patience." " I do protest to you," said Coligny, " that death 
affrights me not ; it is of God that I hold my life ; when He 
requires it back from me, I am quite ready to give it up. But I 
should very much like to see the king before I die ; I have to speak 
to him of things which concern his person and the welfare of his 
State, and which I feel sure none of you would dare to tell him of." 
" I will go and inform his Majesty, . . ." rejoined Damville ; and 
he went out with Villars and Teligny, leaving Marshal de Cosse in 
the room. " Do you remember," said Coligny to him, " the 
warnings I gave you a few hours ago % You will do well to take 
your precautions." 

About two p.m. the king, the queen-mother, and the dukes of 
Anjou and Alen9on, her two other sons, with many of their high 
officers, repaired to the admiral's. " My dear father," said the 
king as he went in, " the hurt is yours ; the grief and the outrage 
mine ; but I will take such vengeance that it shall never be for- 
gotten," to which he added his usual imprecations. 

Saturday passed quietly. On Sunday, August 24, between two He is killed 
and three o'clock in the morning, ('osseins, the commander of the ^ 
king's guards, Besme, a servant of the duke de Guise, and several 
others, broke open the door of Coligny's house, and forced their 
way into his bedroom, where Besme plunged a sword into his bosom, 
the rest despatched him with their daggers; and Besme called out 
of the window to the duke de Guise, who, with other Catholics, was 
waiting in the court below, " It is done." At the command of the 
duke, the body was then thrown out of the window to him, when 
having wiped away the blood to see his features, he said, " It is he 
himself," and then gave a kick to " that venerable face, which when 
alive was dreadful to all the murderers of France." Now the great 
beU of the palace, and the bell of Saint-Germain- I'Auxerrois were 
answered by the bells of all the churches, the Swiss guards were 



302 



History of Fj'ance, 



under arms, and the city militia poured through the streets. Once 
let loose, the Parisian populace was eager indeed, but not alone in 
its eagerness, for the work of massacre ; the gentlemen of the court 
took part in it passionately, from a spirit of vengeance, from reli- 
gious hatred, from the effect of smelling blood, from covetousness 
at the prospect of confiscations at hand. Teligny, the admiral's son- 
in-law, had taken refuge on a roof ; the duke of Anjou's guards 
made him a mark for their arquebuses. La Rochefoucauld, with 
whom the king had been laughing and joking up to eleven o'clock 
the evening before, heard a knocking at his door, in the king's 
name; it is opened; enter six men in masks and poniard him. 
The new queen of JS^avarre, Marguerite de Yalois, had gone to bed 
"by express order of her mother Catherine : ''Just as I was asleep," 
says she, " behold a man knocking with feet and hands at the 
door and shouting, 'E"avarre ! Navarre ! ' My nurse, thinking it was 
the king my husband, runs quickly to the door and opens it. It 
was a gentleman named M. de Leran, who had a sword-cut on the 
elbow, a gash from a halberd on the arm; and was still pursued by 
four archers, who all came after him into my bedroom. He, wishing 
to save himself, threw himself on to my bed ; as for me, feeling 
this man who had hold of me, T threw myself out of bed towards 
the wall, and he after me, still holding me round the body. I did 
not know this man, and T could not tell whether he had come 
thither to offer me violence, or whether the archers were after him 
in particular or after me. We both screamed, and each of \is was 
as much frightened as the other. At last it pleased God that M. de 
!Nan9ay, captain of the guards, came in, who, finding me in this 
plight, though he felt compassion, could not help laughing ; and, 
flying into a great rage with the archers for this indiscretion, he 
made them begone and gave me the life of that poor man, who had 
hold of me, whom I had put to bed and attended to in my closet, 
until he was well." 

"We might multiply indefinitely these anecdotical scenes of the 
massacre, most of them brutally ferocious, others painfully pathetic, 
some generous and calculated to preserve the credit of humanity 
amidst one of its most direful aberrations. We will not pause 
either to discuss the secondary questions which meet us at the period 
of which we are telling the story; for example, the question 
whether Charles IX. fired with his own hand on his protestant 
subjects, whom he had delivered over to the evil passions of the 
aristocracy and of the populace, or whether the balcony from which 
he is said to have indulged in this ferocious pastime existed at that 
time, in the sixteenth century, at the palace of the Louvre and 



St. Bartholomezds day. 303 

overlooking the Seine. The great historic fact of the St. Bartho- 
lomew is what we confine ourselves to. When he had plunged 
into the orgies of the massacre, when, after having said " KiU 
them all ! " he had seen the slaughter of his companions in 
his royal amusements, Teligny and La Eochefoucauld, Charles IX. 
abandoned himself to a fit of mad passion. He was asked whether 
the two young hviguenot princes, Henry of J^avarre and Henry de 
Conde, were to be killed also ; Marshal de Eetx had been in favour 
of it ; Marshal de Tavannes had been opposed to it ; and it was 
decided to spare them. 

The historians, catholic or protestant, contemporary or research- 
ful, differ widely as to the number of the victims in this cruel mas- 
sacre : according to De Thou, there were about 2000 persons killed 
in Paris the first day ; D'Aubigne says 3000 ; Brantome spt-aks of 
4000 bodies that Charles IX. might have seen floating do-\vn the 
Seine; la Popeliniere reduces them to 1000. The uncertainty is Rgg^its of 
still greater when one comes to speak of the number of victims St. Bar- 
throughout the whole of France ;' De Thou estimates it at 30,000, JJi^°^°°^ew'8 
Sully at 70,000, Perefixe, archbishop of Paris in the seventeenth 
century, raises it to 100,000 ; Papirius Masson and Davila reduce 
it to 10,000, without clearly distinguishing between the massacre 
of Paris and those of the provinces ; other historians fix upon 
40,000. Great uncertainty also prevails as to the execution of the 
orders issued from Paris to the governors of the provinces ; the 
names of the viscount D'Orte, governor at Bayonne, and of John le 
Hennuyer, hishop of Lisieux, have become famous from their hav- 
ing refused to take part in the massacre ; but the authenticity of the 
letter from the viscount D'Urte to Charles IX. is disputed, though 
the fact of his resistance appears certain. One thing which is quite 
true and which it is good to call to mind in the midst of so great a 
general criminality is that, at many spots in France, it met with a 
refusal to be associated in it ; President Jeannin at Dijon, the count 
de Tende in Provence, Philibert de la Guiche at Macon, Tanneguy 
le Yeneur de Carrouge at Eouen, the count de Gordes in Dauphiny, 
and many other chiefs, military or civil, openly repudiated the 
example set by the murderers of Paris ; and the municipal body of 
IS^antes, a very catholic town, took upon this subject a resolution 
which does honour to its patriotic firmness as well as to its Chris- 
tian loyalty. A.D. 1573. 

A great, good man, a great functionary and a great scholar, in ^^'^ospital 
disgrace for six years past, the chancellor Michael de I'Hospital gave office 
in his resignation on the 1st of February, 1573, and died six weeks (Feb.), and 
afterwards, on the 18th of March : " I am just at the end of my /jjar, I8). 



304 



History of France. 



A.D. 1572. 
rourth re. 
ligious 
war. 



long journey, and shall have no more business but with God," he 
wrote to the king and the queen-mother. " I implore Him to give 
you His grace and to lead you with His hand in all your affairs, and 
in the government of this great and beautiful kingdom which He 
hath committed to your keeping, with all gentleness and clemency 
towards your good subjects, in imitation of Himself, who is good 
and patient in bearing our burthens, and prompt to forgive you and 
pardon you everything " 

The tardy and lying accusations officially brought against Coligny 
and his friends ; the promises of liberty and security for the Pro- 
testant?, renewed in the terms of the edicts of pacification and, in 
point of fact, annulled at the very moment at which they were being 
renewed ; the massacre continuing here and there in France, at one 
time with the secret connivance and at another notwithstanding the 
publicly given word of the king and the queen-mother ; all this 
policy, at one and the same time violent and timorous, incoherent 
and stubborn, produced amongst the Protestants two contrary effects: 
some grew frightened, others angry. At court, under the direct 
influence of the king and his surroundings, " submission to the 
powers that be " prevailed ; many fled ; others, without abjuring 
their religion, abjured their party. The two reformer-princes, Henry 
of Navarre and Henry de Conde, attended mass on the 29th of 
September, and, on the 3rd of October, wrote to the Pope deploring 
their errors and giving hopes of their conversion. Far away from 
Paris, in the mountains of the Pyrenees and of Languedoc, in the 
towns where the reformers were numerous and confident, at San- 
cerre, at Montauban, at Nimes, at La RocheJle, the spirit of resist- 
ance carried the day. An assembly, meeting at Milhau, drew up a 
provisional ordinance for the government of the reformed Churcli, 
"until it please God, who has the hearts of kings in His keeping, 
to change that of King Charles IX. and restore the State of France 
to good order, or to raise up such neighbouring prince as is mani- 
festly marked out, by his virtue and by distinguishing signs for to 
be the liberator of this poor afflicted people." In November, 1572, 
the fourth religious war broke out. 

The siege of La Eochells was its only important event. Charles 
IX. and his councillors exerted themselves in vain to avoid it. 
There was everything to disquiet them in this enterprise : so sudden 
a revival of the religious war after the grand blow they had just 
struck, the passionate energy manifested by the Protestants in 
asylum at La Eochelle, and the help they had been led to hope for 
from Queen Elizabeth, whom England would never have forgiven 
for indiff'erence in this cause. 



Death of Charles IK. 305 

Biron first, and then the duke of Anjoii in person took the com- 
mand of the siege. They brought up, it is said, 40,000 men and 
60 pieces of artillery. The Rochellese, for defensive strength, had 
but 22 companies of refugees or inhabitants, making in all 3100 
men. The siege lasted from the 26th of February to the 13th of 
June, 1573 ; six assaults were made on the place ; in the last, the 
ladders had been set at night against the wall of what was called 
Gospel bastion ; the duke of Guise, at the head of the assailants, 
had esealaded the breach, but there he discovered a new ditch and 
a new rampart erected inside; and, confronted by these unforeseen 
obstacles, the men recoiled and fell back. La Eochelle was saved. 
Charles IX. was more and more desirous of peace ; his brother, the 
duke of Anjou, had just been elected king of Poland ; Charles IX. 
was anxious for him to leave France, and go to take possession of 
his new kingdom. T'hanks to these complications, the Peace of La 
Eochelle was signed on the 6th of July, 1573. Liberty of creed 
and worship was recognized in the three towns of La Eochelle, 
Montauban, and Nimes. They were not obliged to receive any 
royal garrison, on condition of giving hostages to be kept by the 
king for two years. Liberty of worship throughout the extent of 
their jurisdiction continued to be recognized in the case of lords 
high-justiciary. Everywhere else the reformers had promises of not 
being persecuted for their creed, under the obligation of never hold- 
ing an assembly of more than ten persons at a time. These were 
the most favourable conditions they had yet obtained. 

Certainly this was not what the king had calculated upon when 
he consented to the massacre of the Protestants: "Provided," he 
had said, " that not a single one is left to reproach me." Charles IX. 
had not mind or character sufficiently sound or sufficiently strong to 
support, without great perturbation, the effect of so many violent, re- 
peated and often contradictory impressions. In the spring of 1574, at A.D. 1574. 
the age of twenty-three years and eleven months, and after a reign ol '^^^\ "ty. 
eleven years and six months, Charles IX. was attacked by an in- 
flammatory malady, which brought on violent hemorrhage ; he was 
revisited, in his troubled sleep, by the same bloody visions about 
which, a few days after the St. Bartholomew, he had spoken to his 
physician, Ambrose Pare. He no longer retained in his room any- 
body but two of his servants and his nurse, " of whom he was very 
fond, although she was a huguenot," says the contemporary chro- 
nicler Peter de I'Estoile. " When she had lain down upon a ohest 
and was just beginning to doze, hearing the king moaning, weeping 
and sighing, she went full gently up to the bed : ' Ah ! nurse, nurse,' 
said the king, ' what bloodshed and what murders ! Ah ! what 

X 



3o6 History of France. 

evil counsel have I followed ! Oil ! my God, forgive me them and 
have mercy upon me, if it may please Thee ! I know not what 
hath come to me, so bewildered and agitated do they make me. 
"What will be the end of it all ? What shall I do ? I am lost ; I see 
it well.' Then said the nurse to him : ' Sir, the murders be on the 
heads of those who made you do them ! Of yourself, sir, you never 
could ; and since you are not consenting thereto and are sorry 
therefor, believe that God will not put them down to your account, 
and will hide them with the cloak of justice of His Son, to whom 
alone you must have recourse. But, for God's sake, let your 
Majesty cease weeping !' And thereupon, having been to fetch him 
a pocket-handkerchief because his own was soaked with tears, after 
that the king had taken it from her hand, he signed to her to go 
away and leave him to his rest." 

On Sunday, l^Iay 30, 1574, Whitsunday, about three in the 
afternoon, Charles IX. expired, after having signed an ordinance 
conferring the regency upon his mother Catherine, " who accepted 
it," was the expression in the letters patent, " at the request of 
the duke of Alen9on, the king of Navarre, and other princes and 
peers of France." According to D'Aubigne, Charles often used to 
say of his brother Henry that, " when he had a kingdom on his 
hands, the administration would find him out and that he would 
disappoint those who had hopes of him." The last words he said 
were " that he was glad not to have left any young child to succeed 
him, very well knowing that France needs a man, and that, with a 
child, the king and the reign are unhappy." 

Though elected king of Poland on the 9th of May, 1573, Henry, 
duke of Anjou, had not yet left Paris at the end of the summer. 
Impatient at his slowness to depart, Charles IX. said, with his 
usual oath, " By God's death ! my brother or I must at once leave 
the kingdom ; my mother shall not succeed in preventing it." 
" Go," said Catherine to Henry : " j^ou will not be away long." 
She foresaw, with no great sorrow one would say, the death of 
Charles IX., and her favourite son's accession to the throne of 
France. Having arrived in Poland on the 25th of January, 1574, 
and being crowned at Cracow on the 24th of February, Henry had 
been scarcely four months king of Poland when he was apprised, 
about the middle of June, that his brother Charles had lately 
died, on the 30th of May, and that he was king of France. " Do 
not waste your time in deliberating," said his French advisers : 
**you must go and take possession of the throne of France without 
abdicating that of Poland ; go at once and without fuss." Henry 
followed this counsel. Having started from Cracow on the 18th of 




HENRY 11. 



Henry III. King of France. 307 

June, 1574, lie did Bot arrive until the 5tli of September at Lyons, Returns to 
whither the queen-mother had sent his brother the duke of Alen9on ]^g'"*g'^*'|^ 
and his brother-in-law the king of JSTavarre to receive hira, going the throne, 
herself as far as Bourgoin in Dauphiny in order to be the first to 
see her darling son again. 

The king's entry into France caused, says De Thou, a strange 
revulsion in all minds. " During the lifetime of Charles IX. none 
had seemed more worthy of the throne than Henry, and everybody 
desired to have him for master. But scarcely had he arrived when 
disgust set in to the extent of auguring very ill of his reign. The 
time was ill chosen by him for becoming an indolent and volup- 
tuous king, set upon taking his pleasure in his court, and isolating 
himself from his people. The condition and ideas of France were 
also changing, but to issue in the assumption of quite a different 
character, and to receive development in quite a different direction. 
Catholics or Protestants, agents of the king's government or mal- 
contents, all were getting a taste for, and adopting the practice of 
independence, and a vigorous and spontaneous activity. The bonds _. , .* ^j. 
of the feudal system were losing their hold, and were not yet country. 
replaced by those of a hierarchically organized administration. 
Eeligious creeds and political ideas were becoming, for thoughtful 
and straightforward spirits, rules of conduct, powerful motives of 
action, and they furnished the ambitious with effective weapons. 

It was in a condition of disorganization and red-hot anarchy 
that Henry III., on his return from Poland, and after the St. Bar- 
tholomew, found Fiance j it was in the face of all these forces, 
full of life, but scattered and excited one against another, that, with 
tlie aid of his mother Catherine, he had to re-establish unity in the 
State, the efficiency of the government, and the public peace. 
It was not a task for which the tact of an utterly corrupted 
woman and an irresolute prince sufi&ced. What could the artful 
manoeuvrings of Catherine and the waverings of Henry III. do 
towards taming both Catholics and Protestants at the same time, 
and obliging them to live at peace with one another under one 
equitable and effective power? 

Henry and Catherine aspired to no more than resuming their 
policy of manoeuvring and wavering between the two parties 
engaged in the struggle ; but it was not for so poor a result that the 
ardent Catholics had committed the crime of the St. Bartholomew : 
they promised themselves from it the decisive victory of their 
Church and of their supremacy. Henry de Guise came forward as 
their leader in this grand design. When, in 1575, first the duke 
of Anjou and after him the king of IsTavarre were seen flying 

X 2 



3o8 History of France. 

from the court of Henry III, and commencing an insurrection 

" '^ with the aid of a considerable body of German auxiliaries and 

*^ '■■, French, refugees already on French soil and on their way across 
Champagne, the peril of the Catholic Church appeared so grave 
and so urgent that, in the threatened provinces, the Catholics 
fi devoted themselves with ardour to the formation of a grand asso- 
ciation for the defence of their cause. Then and thus was really 
" The ^^ born the League, secret at first, but, before long, publicly and openly 
proclaimed, which held so important a place in the history of the 
sixteenth century. Henry de Guise did not hesitate to avow the 
League and labour to propagate it ; he did what was far more 
effectual for its success : he entered the field and gained a victory. 
The German allies and French refugees, who had come to support 
Prince Henry de Conde and the duke of Anjou in their insurrec- 
tion, advanced into Champagne. Guise had nothing ready, neither 
army nor money ; he mustered in haste three thousand horse Avho 
were to be followed by a body of foot and a moiety of the king's 
guards. He set out in pursuit of the Germans, came up with them 
on the 10th of October, 1575, at Port-a-Binson, on tlje Marne, and 
ordered them to be attacked by his brother the duke of Mayenne, 
whom he supported vigorously. They were broken and routed. 
He had himself been wounded : he went in obstinate pursuit of a 
Guii.e (le mounted foe whom he had twice touched with his sword, and who, 
Balafre)_ in return, had fired two pistol-shots, of which one took effect in the 
leadersMt)^ leg, and the other carried away part of his cheek and his left ear. 
Thence came his name of Henry ilie Scarred [le Balafre) which 
has clung to him in history. 

Scarcely four years had rolled away since the St. Bartholomew. 
In vain had been the massacre of 10,000 Protestants, according to 
the lowest, and of 100,000, according to the highest estimates, 
besides nearly aU the renowned chiefs of the party. Admiral 
Coligny was succeeded by the king of l^avarre, who was destined 
to become Henry IV. ; and Duke Francis of Guise by his son 
Henry, if not as able, at any rate as brave a soldier, and a more 
determined Catholic than he. Amongst the Protestants, Sully and 
Du Plessis-Mornay were assuming shape and importance by the 
side of the king of Navarre. Catherine de' Medici placed at her 
son's service her Italian adroitness, her maternal devotion and an 
energy rare for a woman between sixty and seventy years of age, 
for forty-three years a queen, and worn out by intrigue and business 
A.D. 1576 combined with pleasure. 

—1588. Th\s, state of things continued for twelve years, from 1576 to 

attempts 1588, with constant alternations of war, truce, and precarious 
to peace. 



Difficult position of Henry III, 309 

peace, and in the midst of constant hesitation on the part of 
Henry III., between alliance with the League, commanded by the 
duke of Guise, and adjustment with the Protestants, of whom the 
king of Navarre was every day becoming the more and more avowed 
leader. Between 1576 and 1580, four treaties of peace were con- 
cluded ; in 1576, the peace called Monsieur s, signed at Chastenay 
in Orleanness; in 1577, the peace of Bergerac or of Poitiers; in 
1579, the peace of Nerac ; in 1580, the peace of Fleix in Perigord. 
In Ifovember, 1576, the states-general were convoked and assem- 
bled at Blois, where they sat and deliberated up to March, 1577, 
without any important result. Neither these diplomatic con- ^^^y *^ 
ventions nor these national assemblies had force enough to esta- 
blish a real and lasting peace between the two parties, for the 
parties themselves would not have it ; in vain did Henry III. 
make concessions and promises of liberty to the Protestants ; he 
was not in a condition to guarantee their execution and make it 
respected by their adversaries. At heart neither Protestants nor 
CathoHcs were for accepting mutual liberty; not only did they both 
''onsider themselves in possession of all religious truth, but thi-y 
also considered themselves entitled to impose it by force upon 
their adversaries. 

From 1576 to 1588, Henry III. had seen the difficulties of his 
government continuing and increasing. His attempt to maintain 
his own independence and the mastery of the situation between 
Catholics and Protestants, by making concessions and promises at 
one time to the former and at another to the latter, had not suc- 
ceeded ; and, in 1584, it became still more difficult to practise. 
On the 10th of June in that year Henry III.'s brother, the duke of 
Anjou, died at Chateau-Thierry. By this death the leader of the 
Protestants, Henry, king of Navarre, became lawful heir to the 
throne of France. The Leaguers could not stomach that prospect. 
The Guises turned it to formidable account. They did not hesitate 
to make the future of France a subject of negotiation with Philip II. 
of Spain, at that time her most dangerous enemy in Europe. By a ^.d. 1584. 
secret convention concluded at Joinville on the 31st of December, The car- 
1584, between Philip and the Guises, it was stipulated that at the Bourbon 
death of Henry III. the crown should pass to Charles, cardinal of proposed 
Bourbon, sixty-four years of age, the king of Navarre's uncle, Avho, ^i^e^of '^*' 
in order to make himself king, undertook to set aside his nephew's France, 
hereditary right and forbid, absolutely, heretical worship in France. 
On the 7th of July, 1585, a treaty was concluded at Nemours 
between Henry III. and the league, to the effect "that by an 
irrevocable edict the practice of the new religion should be for- 



310 History of France. 

bidden, and tliat there should henceforth he no other practice of 

religion, throughout the realm of France, save that of the Catholic, 

Apostolic, and Eoman ; that all the ministers should depart from 

the kingdom within a month ; that all the subjects of his Majesty 

Treaty should be bound to live according to the catholic religion and 

sigred be- make profession thereof within six months, on pain of confiscation 

Henry III ^°^^ ^^ person and goods ; that heretics, of whatsoever quality they 

and the might be, should be declared incapable of holding benefices, public 

league. Qffi^Jeg^ jDositions, and dignities ; that the places which had been 

given in guardianship to them for their security should be taken 

back again forthwith ; and, lastly, that the princes designated in the 

treaty, amongst whom were all the Guises at the top, should receive 

as guarantee certain places to be held by them for five years." 

This treaty was signed by all the negotiators, and specially by 
the queen-mother, the cardinals of Bourbon and Guise, and the 
dukes of Guise and Mayenne. It was the decisive act which made 
the war a war of religion. 

The king of JS'avarre left no stone unturned to convince every- 
body, friends and enemies, great lords and commonalt}', Fi-enchmen 
and foreigners, that this recurrence of war was not his doing, and 
that the Leaguers forced it upon him against his wish, and despite 
of the justice of his cause. Before taking part in the war which 
was day by day becoming more and more clearly and explicitly a 
war of religion, the protestant princes of Germany and the four 
great free cities of Strasbourg, Ulm, IS^uremberg and Frankfort 
resolved to make, as the king of ISTavarre had made, a striking 
move on behalf of peace and religious liberty. They sent to 
Henry III. ambassadors who, on the 11th of October, 1586, treated 
him to some frank and bold speaking, but obtained no satisfactory 
answer. 
The war Except some local and short-lived truces, war was already blazing 
breaks out throughout nearly the whole of France, in Provence, in Dauphiny, 
again, jj-^ ]Sfivernais, in Guienne, in Anjou, in Normandy, in Picardy, in 
Champagne. The successes of Henry de Guise (Vimory, ©ctober 28 ; 
Auneau, jS^ovember 24), and of Henry de Bourbon (Coutras, Octo- 
ber 20), were almost equally disagreeable to Henry de Valois. It is 
probable that, if he could have chosen, he would have preferred 
those of Henry de Bourbon ; if they caused him like jealousy, they 
did not raise in him the same distrust ; he knew the king of J^^avarre's 
loyalty and did not suspect him of aiming to become, whilst he him- 
self was living, king of France. Besides, he considered the Protestants 
less powerful and less formidable than the Leaguers. Henry de Guise, 
on the contrary, was evidently, in his eyes, an ambitious conspirator. 



The barricades. — The States-general. 311 

determined to push liis own fortunes on to the very crown of France, 
if the chances were favourable to him, and not only armed with all 
the power of Catholicism, but urged forward by the passions of the 
League perhaps further and certainly more quickly than his own 
intentions travelled. Since 1584, the Leaguers had, at Paris, 
acquired strong organization amongst the populace ; the city had 
been partitioned out into five districts under five heads, who, 
shortly afterwards, added to themselves eleven others, in order that, 
in the secret council of the association, each amongst the sixteen 
quarters of Paris might have its representative and director. 
Thence the famous Committee of Sixteen, which played so great and 
so formidable a part in the history of that period. It was religious 
fanaticism and democratic fanaticism closely united, and in a 
position to impose their wills upon their most eminent leaders, 
upon the duke of Guise himself 

In vain did Henry III. attempt to resume some sort of authority «' ' ^ f:^' 
in Paris ; his government, his public and private life, and his in Paris. 
person were daily attacked, insulted, and menaced from the elevation 
of the pulpit and in the public thoroughfares by qualified preachers 
or mob-orators. The duke de Guise, whose courage rendered him 
the favourite of the people, became more and more insolent. In 
defiance of a royal order he marched into Paris, and at the head of 
four hundred gentilsJiommes set the king at defiance in the 
apartments of the Louvre. The party of Lorraine thought that 
they had gained their object : they loudly declared their purpose 
of confiidng Henry III to a monastery, and the duchess de Mont- 
pensier, sister of the duke de Guise, showed to everybody a pair of 
gold scissors with which she intended to perform upon the head of 
the dethroned monarch the ceremony of ecclesiastical tonsure. 
Barricades were raised throughout Paris, and the Swiss guards 
whom the king had summoned, disarmed by the populace, would 
have been slaughtered, but for the interposition of Guise himself. 
At that supreme moment, the duke hesitated and recoiled before 
the final step of attacking the Louvre. This wavering saved the 
king ; for Catherine de' Medicis had time to amuse her rival by 
feigned propositions of reconciliation, and in the meanwhile 
Henry III. could retire to Chartres. There the imbecile monarch, 
forsaken by every one, was compelled to approve all that had been States of 
done against himself; he gave to the duke de Guise several °^^' 
powerful towns, and named him generalissimo of the French 
forces ; finally he convoked the States-general at Blois. Guise 
was not satisfied yet, and he insulted his king so repeatedly that 
he drove the most timid of men to the boldest of all resolutions, 
that of murdering him. 



312 History of France. 

On the evening of Thursday, December the 22nd, the duke of 
Guise, on sitting down at table, found under his napkin a note to 
this effect : " The king means to kill you." Guise asked for a pen, 
of Guise wrote at the bottom of the note, " He dare not," and threw it under 
cautioned, the table. In spite of this warning, he persisted in going, on the 
next day, to the council-chamber. On entering the room he felt 
cold, asked to have some fire lighted, and gave orders to his secre- 
tary, Pericard, the only attendant admitted with him, to go and 
fetch the silver-gilt shell he was in the habit of carrying about him 
with damsons or other preserves to eat of a morning. Pericard was 
some time gone ; Guise was in a hurry, and, " be kind enough," he 
said to M. de Morfontaines, " to send word to M. de Saint-Prix 
[first groom of the chamber to Henry III.] that I beg him to let 
me have a few damsons or a little preserve of roses, or some trifle 
of the king's." Four Brignolles plums were brought him ; and he 
ate one. His uneasiness continued ; the eye close to his scar 
became moist ; according to M. de Thou, he bled at the nose. He 
felt in his pocket for a handkerchief to use, but could not find one. 
*' My people," said he, " have not given me my necessaries this 
morning ; there is great excuse for them, they were too miich 
hurried." At his request, Saint-Prix had a handkerchief brought 
to him. Pericard passed his bonbon-box to him, as the guards 
would not let him enter again. The duke took a few plums from 
it, threw the rest on the table, saying, " Gentlemen, who will have 
any?" and rose up hurriedly upon seeing the secretary of state 
Eevol, who came in and said to him, " Sir, the king wants you ; 
he is in his old cabinet." 

The duke of Guise pulled up his cloak as if to wrap himself well 
He is in it, took his hat, gloves, and his sweetmeat-box and went out of 
murdered i}^q room, saying, " Adieu, gentlemen," with a gravity free from any 
"Forty- appearance of mistrust. He crossed the king's chamber contiguous 
five" to the council-hall, courteously saluted, as he passed, Loignac and 
guar smen ^^-^ gQj^j.a^(jgg ^Jiom he found drawn up, and who, returning him a 
frigid obeisance, followed him as if to show him respect. On 
arriving at the door of the old cabinet, and just as he leaned down 
to raise the tapestry that covered it. Guise was struck by five poniard 
blows in the chest, neck, and reins : " God ha' mercy 1" he cried, 
and, though his sword was entangled in his cloak and he was him- 
self Dinned by the arms and legs and choked by the blood that 
spurted from his throat, he dragged his murderers, by a supreme 
effort of energy, to the other end of the room, where he fell down 
backwards and lifeless before the bed of Henry III. who, coming 
to the door of his room and asking " if it was done," contemplated 



Death of the Queen Mother. 3 13 

with mingled satisfaction and terror the inanimate body of his 
mighty rival, " who seemed to be merely sleeping, so little was he 
changed." " My God ! how tall he is !" cried the king ; "he looks 
even taller than when he wa,s alive." 

"They are killing my brother!" cried the cardinal of Guise 
Avhen he heard the noise that was being made in the next room ; 
and he rose up to run thither. The archbishop of Lyons, Peter 
d'Espinac, did the same. The duke of Aumont held them both 
back, saying, " Gentlemen, we must wait for the king's orders." 
Orders came to arrest them both and confine them in a small room 
over the council chamber. They had " eggs, bread, wine from the 
king's cellar, their breviaries, their night-gowns, a palliasse, and a 
mattress," brought to them there ; and they were kept under ocular 
supervision for four and twenty hours. The cardinal of Guise was 
released the next morning, but only to be put to death like his 
brother. The king spared the archbishop of Lyons. 

Thirteen days after the murder of the duke of Guise, on the ^^- 1589 
5th of January, 1589, Catherine de' Medici herself died. IS^or Catherine 
was her death, so far as affairs and the public were concerned, an de' Medici, 
event : her ability was of the sort which is worn out by the fre- 
quent use made of it, and which, when old age comes on, leaves 
no long or grateful reminiscence. Time has restored Catherine de* 
Medici to her proper place in history ; she was quickly forgotten 
by her contemporaries. 

It was not long before Henry IIL perceived that, to be king, it Position of 
was not sufficient to have murdered his rival. He survived the ^^"^y ^^*' 
duke of Guise only seven months, and, during that short period, 
he was not really king, all by himself, for a single day ; never had 
his kingship been so embarrassed and impotent ; the violent death 
of the duke of Guise had exasperated much more than enfeebled 
the League ; the feeling against his murderer was passionate and 
contagious ; the catholic cause had lost its great leader ; it found 
and accepted another in his brother the duke of Mayenne, far 
inferior to his elder brother in political talent and prompt energy 
of character, but a brave and determined soldier, a much better 
man of party and action than the sceptical, undecided, and indolent 
Henry III. The majority of the great towns of France, Paris, 
Eouen, Orleans, Toulouse, Lyons, Amiens, and whole provinces 
declared eagerly against the royal murderer. He demanded sup- 
port from the states-general, who refused it ; and he was obliged to 
dismiss them. The parliament of Paris, dismembered on the 16tli 
of January, 1589, by the counsel of Sixteen, became the instru- 
ment of the Leaguers. The majority of the other parliaments 



3U 



History of France, 



He treats 
with the 
king of 
Navarre. 



Siege of 
Paris. 



followed the example set by that of Paris. The Sorbonne, consulted 
by a petition presented in the name of all Catholics, decided that 
Frenchmen were released from their oath of allegiance to Henry III., 
and might with a good conscience turn their arms against him. Henry 
made some obscure attempts to come to an arrangement with certain 
chiefs of the Leaguers ; but they were rejected with violence. 

Tliere was clearly for him but one possible ally who had a chance 
of doing effectual service, and that was Henry of Navarre and the 
Protestants. It cost Henry III. a great deal to have recourse to 
that party ; his conscience and pusillanimity both revolted at it 
equally \ in spite of his moral corruption, he was a sincere Catholic, 
and the prospect of excommunication troubled him deeply. How- 
ever, on the 3rd of April, 1589, a truce for a year was concluded 
between the two kings. It set forth that the king of Navarre 
should serve the king of Prance with all his might and main; 
that he should have, for the movements of his troops on both 
banks of the Loire, the place of Saumur ; that the places of which 
he made himself master should be handed over to Henry III., 
and that he might not anywhere do anything to the prejudice 
of the catholic religion ; that the Protestants should be no more 
disquieted throughout the whole of France, and that, before the 
expiration of the truce, King Henry III. should give them assurance 
of peace. This negotiation was not concluded without difficulty, 
especially as regarded the town of Saumur ; there was a general 
desire to cede to the king of Navarre only some place of less impor- 
tance on the Loire; and when, on the 15th of April, Du Plessis- 
Mornay, who had been appointed governor of it, presented himself 
for admittaiTce at the head of his garrison, tlie royalist commandant 
who had to deliver the keys to him limited himself to letting them 
drop at his feet. Mornay showed alacrity in picking them up. 

On arriving before Paris towards the end of July, 1589, the two 
kings besieged it with an army of 42,000 men, the strongest and 
the best they had ever had under their orders. " The affairs of 
Henry III.," says De Thou, " had changed face ; fortune was pro- 
nouncing for him." Quartered in the house of Count de Eetz, 
at St. Cloud, he could thence see quite at his ease his city of Paris. 
" Yonder," said he, " is the heart of the League ; it is there that the 
blow must be struck. It were great pity to lay in ruins so beauti- 
ful and goodly a city. Still, I must settle accounts with the rebels 
who are in it and who ignominiously drove me away." " On Tues- 
day, August 1st, at eight a.m., he was told," says L'Estoile, " that 
a monk desired to speak with him, but that his guards made a 
di£Q.culty about letting him in. 'Let him in,' said the king: 'if 



Death of Henry III. 



315 



be is refused, it will be said that I drive monks away and will 
not see them.' Incontinently entered the monk, having in his 
sleeve a knife unsheathed. He made a profound reverence to the 
king, who had just got up and had nothing on but a dressing- 
gown about his shoulders, and presented to him despatches from 
Count de Brienne, saying that he had further orders to tell the 
king privately something of importance. Then the king ordered 
those who were present to retire, and began reading the letter which ^'"'^^y ■'v* 
the monk had brought asking for a private audience afterwards; (Aug 1). 
the monk, seeing the king's attention taken up with reading, drew 
his knife from his sleeve and drove it right into the king's small 
gut, below the navel, so home that he left the knife in the hole ; 
the which the king having drawn out with great exertion struck the 
monk a blow with the point of it on his left eyebrow, crying, 'Ah ! 
wicked monk ! he has killed me ; kill him ! ' At which cry run- 
ning quickly up, the guards and others, such as happened to be 
nearest, massacred this assassin of a Jacobin who, as D'Aubigne 
says, stretched out his two arms against the wall, counterfeiting the 
crucifix, whilst the blows were dealt him. Having been dragged out 
dead from the king's chamber, he was stripped naked to the waist, 
covered with his gown and exposed to the public." Henry HI. 
expired on the 2nd of August, 1589, between two and three in the 
morning. The first persons Henry of IsTavarre met as he entered 
the Hotel de Eetz were the officers of the Scottish guard, who threw 
themselves at his feet, saying : " Ah ! sir, you are now our king 
and our master." 





Henry IV, 
The two 
moving 

principles 
of his 
policy. 



State of 
parties in 
France. 



CHAPTER IX. 

EEIGN OP HENRY IV. (1589 — 1593.) — LOUIS XIII., EICHELIEU AND 

THE COURT. 

Henry IV. perfectly understood and steadily took the measure 
of the situation in which he was placed. He was in a great 
minority throughout the country as well as the army, and he would 
have to deal with public passions, worked by his foes for their own 
ends, and with the personal pretensions of his partisans. He made 
no mistake about these two facts, and he allowed them great weight ; 
''>ut he did not take for the ruling principle of his policy and for 
iiis first rule of conduct the plan of alternate concessions to the dif- 
ferent parties and of continually humouring personal interests ; he 
set his thoughts higher, upon the general and natural interests of 
Prance as he found her and saw her. They resolved themselves, 
in his eyes, into the following great points : maintenance of the 
hereditary rights of monarchy, preponderance of Catholics in the 
government, peace between Catholics and Protestants, and religious 
liberty for Protestants. With him these points became the law 
of his policy and his kingly duty as well as the nation's right. He 
proclaimed them in the first words that he addressed to the lords 
and principal personages of State assembled around him. On the 
4th of August, 1589, in the camp at St. Cloud, the majority of the 
princes, dukes, lords, and gentlemen present in the camp expressed 
their full adhesion to the accession and the manifesto of the king, 
promising him " service and obedience against rebels and enemies 
•who would usurp the kingdom." Two notable leaders, the duke of 



Protestants, Leaguers, and Policists. 317 

Epernon amongst the Catholics and the duke of La Tremoille 
amongst the Protestants, refused to join in this adhesion ; the 
former saying that his conscience would not permit him to serve 
a heretic king, the latter alleging that his conscience forbade 
him to serve a prince who engaged to protect catholic idolatry. 
They withdrew, D'Epernon into Angoamois and Saintonge, tak- 
ing with him six thousand foot and twelve thousand horse ; and 
La Tremoille into Poitou, with nine battalions of reformers. They 
had an idea of attempting, both of them, to set up for themselves 
independent principalities. Three contemporaries, Sully, La Force, 
and the bastard of Angouleme, bear witness that Henry IV. was 
deserted by as many huguenots as Catholics. The French royal 
army was reduced, it is said, to one- half. As a make-weight, Sancy 
prevailed upon the Swiss, to the number of twelve thousand, and 
two thousand German auxiliaries, not only to continue in the ser- 
vice of the new king but to wait six months for their pay, as he was 
at the moment unable to pay them. From the 14th to the 20th 
of August, in Ile-de-France, in Picardy, in l^ormandy, in Auvergne, 
in Champagne, in Burgundy, in Anjou, in Poitou, in Languedoc, 
in Orleanness and in Touraine, a great number of towns and districts 
joined in the determination of the royal army. 

There was, in 1589, an unlawful pretender to the throne of J?^®!'*'^* 
France ; and that was Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, younger Bourbon. 
brother of Anthony de Bourbon, king of J^avarre, and consequently 
uncle of Henry IV., sole representative of the elder branch. Under 
Henry III., the cardinal had thrown in his lot with the League ; 
and, after the murder of Guise, Henry III. had, by way of precau- 
tion, ordered him to be arrested and detained him in confinement 
at Chinon, where he still was when Henry III. was in his turn 
murdered. The Leaguers proclaimed him king under the name of 
Charles X. ; and, eight months afterwards, on the 5th of March, 
1590, the parliament of Paris issued a decree "recognizing Charles X. 
as true and lawful king of France." Du Plessis-Mornay, then 
governor of Saumur, had the cardinal removed to Fontenay-le- 
Comte in Poitou, "under the custody of Sieur de la Boulaye, 
governor of that place, whose valour and fidelity Avere known to 
him." On the 9th of May, 1590, not three months after the decree 
of the parliament of Paris which had proclaimed him true and law- 
ful king of France, Cardinal de Bourbon, still a prisoner, died at 
Fontenay, aged sixty- seven. A few weeks before his death he had 
written to his nephew Henry IV. a letter in which he recognized 
him as his sovereign. 

The League was more than ever dominant in Paris ; Henry IV, 



3 1 8 History of France. 

A.D. 1589, could not tliink of entering there. He was closely pressed "by 
Arques Mayenne, -who boasted that he would very shortly bring him into 

(Sept. 13 — Paris bound hand and foot. Already windows were engaged on the 
■'' line of streets through which the procession was to pass. But 
Mayenne's adversary was a prince of the utmost vigilance as well as 
courage, and who, as the duke of Parma himself said, " was accus- 
tomed to wear out more boots than shoes." He awaited the attack 
of Mayenne at Arques in Iformandy, where with three thousand 
men alone he defeated an army of thirty thousand. Strengthened 
by the accession of a number of gentilshommes, Henry then once 
more attacked Paris, and pillaged the faubourg Saint Germain. 

He would perhaps have carried the terror-stricken capital itself, if 
the imperfect breaking-up of the St, Maixent bridge on the Somme 
had not allowed Mayenne, notwithstanding his tardiness to arrive at 
Paris in time to enter with his army, form a junction with the 
Leaguers amongst the population, and j^revail upon the king to 

Progress carry his arms elsewhither. Henry left some of his lieutenants to 

°^J^®^''y carry on the war in the environs of Paris, and himself repaired on 
the 21st of November to Tours, where the royalist parliament, the 
exchequer-chamber, the court of taxation, and all the magisterial 
bodies which had not felt inclined to submit to the despotism of 
the League, lost no time in rendering him homage, as the head and 
the representative of the national and the lawful cause. He reigned 
and ruled, to real purpose, in the eight principal provinces of the 
North and Centre, Ile-de-France, Picardy, Champagne, Normandy, 
Orleanness, Touraine, Maine, and Anjou; and his authority, 
although disputed, was making way in nearly all the other parts of 
the kingdom. He made war, not like a conqueror, but like a king 
who wanted to meet with acceptance in the places which he occupied 
and which he would soon have to govern. It was not long before 
Henry reaped the financial fruits of his protective equity ; at the 
close of 1589 he could count upon a regular revenue of more 
than two millions of crowns, very insufficient, no doubt, for the 
wants of his government, but much beyond the official resources 
of his enemies. He had very soon taken his proper rank in 
Europe : the Protestant Powers which had been eager to recog- 
nize him, England, Scotland, the Low Countries, the Scandina- 
vian States, and reformed Germany, had been joined by the 
republic of Venice, the most judiciously governed State at that 
time in Europe, but solely on the ground of political interests 
and views, independently of any religious question. 

As the government of Henry IV. went on growing in strength 
and extent, the moderate Catholics were beginning, not as yet to 



Attitude of the Pope. 319 

make approaches towards him, but to see a glimmering possibility 
of treating with him, and obtaining from him such conceesions aa 
they considered necessary, at the same time that they in their turn 
made to him sixch as he might consider sufficient for his party and 
himself. 

Unhappily the new pope, Gregory XIV., elected on the 5th of AD. 1590. 
December, 1590, was humbly devoted to the Spanish policy, meekly xiV^noBe 
subservient to Philip II. ; that is, to the cause of religious persecu- His rela- 
tion and of absolute power, without regard for anything else. The p°"^ ^ 
relations of France with the Holy See at once felt the effects of this ; 
Cardinal Gaetani received from Eome all the instructions that the 
most ardent Leaguers could desire ; and he gave his approval to a 
resolution of the Sorbonne to the effect that Henry de Bonrbonj 
heretic and relapsed, was for ever excluded from the crown, whether 
he became a Catholic or not. Henry IV. had convoked the states- 
general at Tours for the month of March, and had summoned to that 
city the archbishops and bishops to form a national council, and to 
deliberate as to the means of restoring the king to the bosom of the 
Catholic Church. The legate prohibited this council, declaring, 
beforehand, the excommunication and deposition of any bishops who 
should be present at it. The Leaguer parliament of Paris forebade, 
on pain of death and confiscation, any connexion, any corre- 
spondence with Henry de Bourbon and his partisans. A solemn 
procession of the League took place at Paris on the 14th of March, 
and, a few days afterwards, the union Avas sworn afresh by all the 
municipal chiefs of the population. In view of such passionate 
hostility, Henry IV., a stranger to any sort of illusion, at the same 
time that he was always full of hope, saw that his successes at 
Arques were insufficient for him, and that, if he were to occupy 
the throne in peace, he must win more victories. He recommenced 
the campaign by the siege of Dreux, one of the towns which it was 
most important for him to possess, in order to put pressure on Paris 
and cause her to feel, even at a distance, the perils and evils of war. 

On Wednesday, the 14th of March, 1590, the two armies met on a.D. 1590. 
the plains of Ivry, a village six leagues from Evreux, on the left Battle of 
bank of the Eure. A battle ensued in which, although the resources n/i^^ \i^^ 
of modern warfare were brought into operation, the decisive force 
consisted, as of old, in the cavalry. It appeared as if Henry IV. 
must succumb to the superior force of the enemy : further and fur- 
ther backward was his white banner seen to retire, and the great 
mass appeared as if they designed to follow it At length Henry 
cried out that those who did not wish to fight against the enemy- 
might at least turn and see him die, and immediately plunged into 



320 History of France. 

the thickest of the "battle. It appeared as if the royalist gentry had 
felt the old martial fire of their ancestry enkindled by these words, 
and hy the glance that accompanied them. Eaising one might;y 
shout to God, they threw themselves upon the enemy, following 
their king, whose plume was now their banner. In this there might 
have been some dim principle of religious zeal, but that devotion to 
personal authority, which is so powerful an element in war and in 
policy, was wanting. Xlie royalist and religious energy of Henry's 
troops conquered the Leaguers. The cavalry was broken, scattered, 
and swept from the field, and the confused manner of their retreat 
so puzzled the infantry that they were not able to maintain their 
ground ; the German and French were cut down ; the Swiss sur- 
rendered. It was a complete victory for Henry IV. 

It was not only as able captain and valiant soldier that Henry 
IV. distinguished himself at Ivry ; there the man was as con- 
spicuous for the strength of his better feelings, as generous and as 
Generosity affectionate as the king was far-sighted and bold. When the word 
jy was given to march from Dreux, Count Schomberg, colonel of the 
German auxiliaries called reiters, had asked for the pay of his troops, 
letting it be understood that they would not fight, if their claims 
were not satisfied. Henry had replied harshly, " People don't ask 
for money on the eve of a battle." At Ivry, just as the battle was 
on the point of beginning, he went up to Schomberg : " Colonel," 
said he, " I hurt your feelings. This may be the last day of my 
life. I can't bear to take away the honour of a brave and honest 
gentleman like you. Pray forgive me and embrace me." " Sir," 
answered Schomberg, "the other day your majesty wounded me, 
to-day you kill me." He gave up the command of the reiters in 
order to fight in the king's own squadron, and was killed in action. 
The victory of Ivry had a great effect in France and in Europe, 
though not immediately and as regarded the actual campaign of 1590. 
The victorious kitig moved on Paris and made himself master of the 
little towns in the neighbourhood with a view of besieging the 
_ . . capital. The investment became more strict ; it was kept up for 
Paris. more than three months, from the end of May to the beginning of 
September, 1590; and the city was reduced to a severe state of 
famine, which would have been still more severe if Henry IV. had 
not several times over permitted the entry of some convoys of 
provisions and the exit of the old men, the women, the children, in 
fact, the poorest and weakest part of the population. '' Paris must not 
The duke he'a cemetery," he said : " I do not wish to reign over the dead." 
of Parma i^ the meantime, Duke Alexander of Parma, in accordance with 
Mayenne. express orders from Philip II., went from the Low Countries, with 




HENRY IV. 



Strategy of the two dukes. 321 

his ai'my, to join Mayenne at Meaux, and threaten Henry IV. 
with their united forces if he did not retire from tlie wall^ of the capi- 
tal. Henry IV. offered the two dukes battle, if they really wished to 
put a stop to the investment ; hut " I am not come so far," answered 
the duke of Parma, " to take counsel of my enemy ; if my manner 
of warfare does not please the king of ISTavarre, let him force me to 
change it instead of giving me advice that nohody asks him for." 
Henry in vain attempted to make the duke of Parma accept battle. 
The able Italian established himself in a strongly entrenched camp, 
surprised Lagny and opened to Paris the navigation of the Marnfi, 
by which provisions were speedily brought up. Henry decided ^^g^^J yjg* 
upon retreating ; he dispersed the different divisions of his army fore them. 
into Touraine, I^ormandy, Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, and 
himself took up his quarters at Senlis, at Compiegne, in the towns 
on the banks of the Oise. The duke of Mayenne arrived on the 
18th of September at Paris ; the duke of Parma entered it himself 
with a few officers and left it on the 13th of l^ovember, with his 
army on his way back to the Low Countries, being a little harassed 
in his retreat by the royal cavalry, but easy, for the moment, as to the 
fate of Paris and the issue of the war, which continued during the 
first six months of the year 1591, but languidly and disconnectedly, 
with successes and reverses see-sawing between the two pai'ties and 
without any important results. 

Then began to appear the consequences of the victory of Ivry and Besults of 
the progress made by Henry IV., in spite of the check he received ^^^' 
before Paris and at some other points in the kingdom. Not only 
did many moderate Catholics make advances to him, struck with his 
sympathetic ability and his valour, and hoping that he would end 
by becoming a Catholic, but patriotic wrath was kindling in France 
against Philip II. and the Spaniards, those fomenters of civil war . 
in the mere interest of foreign ambition. 

The League was split up into two parties, the Spanish League and The two 
the French League. The committee of Sixteen laboured incessantly ^^^S'^^^- 
for the formation and triumph of the Spanish League ; and its 
principal leaders wrote, on the 2nd of September, 1591, a letter to 
Philip IL, offering him the crown of France and pledging their 
allegiance to him as his subjects : "We can positively assure your 
Majesty," they said, "that the wishes of all Catholics are to see 
your Catholic Majesty holding the sceptre of this kingdom and 
reigning over us, even as we do throw ourselves right willingly into 
your arms as into those of our father, or at any rate establishing one 
of your posterity upon the throne." These ringleaders of the Spanish 
League had for their army the blindly fanatical and demagogic 



;22 



History of France. 



populace of Paris, and were, farther, supported by 4000 Spanish 
troops whom Philip II. had succeeded in getting almost surrepti- 
tiously into Paris. They created a council of ten, the sixteenth 
century's committee of public safetj'"; they proscribed the 2Jo/^t'^6'fe; 
they, on the 15th of N"ovember, had the president, Brisson, and two 
councillors of the Leaguer parliament arrested, hanged them to a 
beam and dragged the corpses to the Place de Greve, where they 
strung them up to a gibbet with inscriptions setting forth that they 
were heretics, traitors to the city and enemies of the catholic princes. 
r ^tcT^s* Whilst the Spanish League was thus reigning at Paris, the duke of 
the French Mayenne was at Laon, preparing to lead his army, consisting partly 
League. ^^f Spaniards, to the relief of Rouen, the siege of which Henry IV. 
was commencing. Being summoned to Paris by messengers who 
succeeded one another every hour, he arrived there on the 28th of 
November, 1591, with 2000 French troops ; he armed the guard of 
burgesses, seized and hanged, in a ground-floor room of the Louvre, 
four of the chief leaders of the Sixteen, suppressed their committee, 
re-established the parliament in full authority and, finally, restored 
the security and preponderance of the French Leagua, whilst taking 
the reins once more into his own hands. 

Whilst these two Leagues, the one Spanish and the other French, 
"Vi'^ere conspiring thus persistently, sometimes together and sometimes 
one against the other, to promote personal ambition and interests, 
at the same time national instinct, respect for traditional rights, 
weariness of civil war, and the good sense which is born of long 
experience, were bringing France more and more over to the cause 
and name of Henry IV. In all the provinces, throughout all ranks 
of society, the population non-enrolled amongst the factions were 
turning their eyes towards him as the only means of putting an 
end to war at home and abroad, the only pledge of national unity, 
public prosperity, and even freedom of trade, a hazy idea as yet, 
but even now prevalent in the great ports of France and in Paris. 
Would Henry turn Catholic'! That was the question asked 
everywhere, amongst Protestants with anxiety, but with keen 
desire and not without hope amongst the mass of the population. 
The rumour ran that, on this point, negotiations were half opened 
even in the midst of the League itself, even at the court of Spain, 
ev^n at Rome where Pope Clement VIII., a more moderate man 
than his predecessor, Gregory XIV., "had no desire," says Sully, 
" to foment the troubles of France, and still less that the king of 
Spain should possibly become its undisputed king, rightly judging 
that this would be laying open to him the road to the monarchy 
of Christendom, and, consequently, reducing the Roman pontiffs to 



Henry IV. and the Catholic Church. 323 

the position, if it were his good pleasure, of his mere chaplains " 

[CEco7iomies royales, t. ii. p. 106]. Such being the existing state 

of facts and minds, it was impossible that Henry IV. should not 

ask himself roimdly the same 'question and feel that he had no time 

to lose in answering it. 

In spite of the breadth and indejDendence of his mind, Henry lY. jf g^^y jy 

was sincerely puzzled. He was of those who, far from clinging to and Roman 

a single fact and confining themselves to a single duty, take account Catholi- 

. . D .; J cism. 

of the complication of the facts amidst which they live, and of the 

variety of the duties which the general situation or their own 
imposes upon them. Born in the reformed faith, and on the steps 
of the throne, he was struggling to defend his political rights whilst 
keeping his religious creed ; but his religious creed was not the fruit 
of very mature or very deep conviction ; it was a question of first 
claims and of honour rather than a matter of conscience ; and, on 
the other hand, the peace of France, her prosperity, perhaps her 
territorial integrity, were dependent upon the triumph of the poli- 
tical rights of the Bearnese. Even for his brethren in creed his 
triumph was a benefit secured, for it was an end 01 persecution and 
a first step towards liberty. There is no measuring accurately how 
far ambition, personal interest, a king's egotism had to do with 
Henry IV.'s abjuration of his religion ; none would deny that those 
human infirmities were present; but all this does not prevent the 
conviction that patriotism was uppermost in Henry's soul, and that 
the idea of his duty as king towards France, a prey to all the evils 
of civil and foreign war, was the determining motive of his reso- 
lution. It cost him a great deal. On the 26th of April, 1593, he 
wrote to the grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand de' Medici, that he 
had decided to turn Catholic " two months after that the duke of ^.D. 1593. 
Mayenne should have come to an agreement with him on just and Re.olvestD 
suitable terms ; " and, foreseeing the expense that would be occa- Protestant- 
sioned to him by " this great change in his affairs," he felicitated ism. 
himself upon knowing that the grand duke was disposed to second 
his efforts towards a levy of 4000 Swiss and advance a year's pay 
for them. On the 28th of April, he begged the bishop of Chartres, 
^Nicholas de Thou, to be one of the catholic prelates whose instruc- 
tions he would be happy to receive on the 15th of July, and he 
sent the same invitation to several other prelates. On the 16th 
of May, he declared to his council his resolve to become a convert. 
This news, everywhere spread abroad, produced a lively burst of 
national and Bourbonic feeling even where it was scarcely to be 
expected ; at the states-general of the League, especially in the 
chamber of the noblesse, many members protested " that they would 
not trpat with foreigners, or promote the election of a woman, or 

Y 2 



324 History of France. 

give their suffrages to any one unknown to them, and at the choice of 
his Catholic Majesty of Spain." At Paris, a part of the clergy, the 
incumbents of St. Eustache, St. Merri, and St. Sulpice, and eveii 
some of the popular preachers, violent; Leaguers but lately, and 
notably Guincestre, boldly preached peace and submission to the 
king if he turned Catholic. The principal of the French League, 
in matters of policy and negotiation, and Mayenne's adviser since 
1589, Villeroi, declared "that he vs^ould not bide in a place where 
the laws, the honour of the nation and the independence of the 
kingdom were held so cheap ;" and he left Paris on the 28th of June. 
During these disputes amongst the civil functionaries and con- 
tinuing all the while to make proposals for a general truce, Henry 
IV. vigorously resumed warlike operations so as to bring pressure 
upon his adversaries and make them perceive the necessity of 
accepting the solution he offered them. He besieged and took the 
town of Dreux, of which the castle alone persisted in holding out. 
He cut off the provisions which were being brought hy the Marne 
to Paris. He kept Poitiers strictly invested. Lesdiguieres defeated 
the Savoyards and the Spaniards in the valleys of Dauphiny and 
Piedmont. Count Mansfield had advanced with a division towards 
Picardy ; but at the news that the king was marching to encounter 
him, he retired with precipitation. Prom the military as well as 
the political point of view, there is no condition worse than that 
of stubbornness mingled with discouragement. And that was the 
state of Mayenne and the League. Henry IV. perceived it, and 
confidently hurried forward his political and military measures. 
The castle of Dreux was obliged to capitulate. Thanks to the 4000 
Swiss paid for him by the grand duke of Florence, to the numerous 
volunteers brought to him by the noblesse of his party, " and to 
the sterling quality of the old huguenot phalanx, folks who, from 
father to son, are familiarized with death," says D'Aubigne, 
Henry IV. had recovered in June 1593, so good an army that "by 
means of it," he wrote to Ferdinand de' Medici, "I shall be able to 
reduce the city of Paris in so short a time as will cause you great 
contentment." But he was too judicious and too good a patriot 
not to see that it was not by an indefinitely prolonged war that he 
would be enabled to enter upon definitive possession of his crown, 
and that it was peace, religious peace, that he must restore to 
He assem- France in order to really become her king. He entered resolutely, 

bles a con- ^^ ^^ \^\h. of July, 1593, upon the employment of the moral 

f6r©n.c© 01 . 

divines at means which alone could enable him to attain this end ; ho 

Mantes. assembled at Mantes the conference of prelates and doctors, 

Catholic and Protestant, which he had announced as the preface 

to his conversion. 



Abjuration of Protestafitism by Henry IV, 325 

Ten days after, on Sunday the 25tli of July, 1593, he repairied 
in gveai state to the church of St. Denis. On arriving with all his ^^^^ abj^ 
train in front of the grand entrance, he was received by Reginald ratio a 
de Beaune, archbishop of iBourges, the nine bishops, the doctors and ^^^^^ ^^)' 
the incumbents who had taken part in the conferences and all the 
brethren of the abbey. " Who are you ? " asked the archbishop 
who officiated, "The king." "What want you?" "To be 
received into the bosom of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Eoman. 
Church." " Do you desire it ? " " Yes, I will and desire it." At 
these words the king knelt and made the stipulated profession of 
faith. The archbishop gave him absolution together with bene- 
diction ; and, conducted by all the clergy to the choir of the church, 
he there, upon the gospels, repeated his oath, made his confession, 
heard mass, and was fully reconciled with the Church. The in- 
habitants of Paris, dispensing with the passports which were 
refused them by Mayenne, had flocked in masses to St. Denis and 
been present at the ceremony. The vaulted roof of the church 
resounded with their shouts of Hurrah for the Tcing ! There was 
the same welcome on the part of the dwellers in the country when 
Henry repaired to the valley of Montmorency and to Montmartre 
to perform his devotions there. Here, then, was religious peace, a 
prelude to political reconciliation between the monarch and the 
great majority of his subjects. 

On one side a great majority of Catholics and Protestants 
favourable for different practical reasons to Henry IV. turned Catholic 
king ; on the other, two miiiorities, one of stubborn Catholics of 
the League, the other of Protestants anxious for their creed and 
their liberty ; both discontented and distrustful. Such, after 
Henry IV. 's abjuration, was the striking feature in the condition 
of France and in the situation of her king. This triple fact was 
constantly present to the mind of Henry IV. and ruled his conduct 
during all his reign ; all the acts of his government are proof of 
that. It was province by province, inch by inch that he had to 
recover his kingdom. At Lyons, the success of the king was easy 
and disinterested ; not so in JS'ormandy. Andrew de Brancas, lord iteconcilia- 
of Villars, an able man and valiant soldier, was its governor ; he tioQ of 
had served the League with zeal and determination ; nevertheless brancas 
" from the month of August, 1593, immediately after the king's 
conversion, he had shown a disposition to become his servant and 
to incline thereto all those whom he had in his power." Thinking, 
however, that every man has his price, he determined to get out of 
Henry IV. as much as he could, and the following memorandum, 
shows how far he was successful : — " To M. Villars, for himself, his 
brother Chevalier d'Oise, the towns of Eouen and Havre and other 



326 History of France. 

places, as well as for compensation which had to be made to 
MM. de Montpensier, Marshal do Biron^ Chancellor de Chi- 
verny and other persons included in his treaty .... 3,447,800 
livres." 

To these two instances of royalist reconciliation, Lyons and the 
spontaneous example set by her population and Eouen and the 
dearly purchased capitulation of her governor Villars, must be 
added a third, of a different sort. Nicholas de Neufville, lord of 
and Ville- Villeroi, after having served Charles IX. and Henry III., had 
become through attachment to the catholic cause a member of the 
League and one of the duke of Mayenne's confidants. When 
Henry IV. was king of France and Catholic king, Villeroi tried to 
serve his cause with Mayenne, and induce Mayenne to be reconciled 
with him. ' Meeting with no success, he made up his mind to 
separate from the League, and go over to the king's service. He 
could do so without treachery or shame ; even as a Leaguer and a 
servant of Mayenne's, he had always been opposed to Spain, and 
devoted to a French, but at the same time a faithfully catholic policy. 
He imported into the service of Henry IV. the same sentiments 
and the same bearing ; he was still a zealou.s catholic and a partisan, 
for king and country's sake, of alliance with catholic powers. 
He was a man of wits, experience, and resource, who knew Europe 
well and had some influence at the court of Eome. Henry IV. 
saw at once the advantage to be gained from him, and in spite of 
the Protestants' complaints and his sister Princess Catherine's 
prayers, made him, on the 25th of September, 1594, Secretary of 
State for foreign affairs. This acquisition did not cost him so dear 
as that of Villars : still we read in the statement of sums paid by 
Henry IV. for this sort of conquest : — " Furthermore, to M. de 
Villeroi, for himself, his son, the town of Pontoise, and other 
individuals, according to their treaty, 476,594 livres." 

Henry IV. had been absolved and crowned at St. Denis by the 
bishops of France ; he had not been anointed at Rheims according 
to the religious traditions of the French monarchy. At Eheims 
he could not be, for it was still in the power of the League. The 
ceremony took place at Chartres on the 27th of February, 1594 ; 
andrited * *^^^ bishop of Chartres, Nicholas De Thou, officiated, and drew up 
atChartres. a detailed account of all the ceremonies and all the rejoicings ; 
thirteen medals, each weighing fifteen gold crowns, were struck 
according to custom ; they bore the king's image, and for legend, 
Invia virtuti nulla ed via (To manly worth no road is inaccessible). 
Henry IV., on his knees before the grand altar, took the usual 
oath, the form of which was presented to him by Chancellor de 
Chiverny. "With the exception of local accessories, which were 



Henry IV. in Paris. 327 

acknowledged tu be impossible and unnecessary, there was nothing 
lacking to this religious hallowing of his kingship. 

But one other thing, more important than the anointment at 
Chartres, was wanting. He did not possess the capital of his king- 
dom : the League were still masters of Paris ; uneasy masters of 
their situation ; but not so uneasy, however, as they ought to 
have been. The great leaders of the party, the duke of Mayenne, 
his mother the duchess of Nemours, his sister the duchess of 
Montpensier, the duke of Feria, Spanish Ambassador, were within 
its walls, a prey to alarm and discouragement. Henry IV. started 
on the 21st of March, nearly one month after the ceremony we 
have just related, from Senlis, where he h.ad mustered his troops, 
arrived about midnight at St. Denis, and immediately began his 
march to Paris, where a strong party headed by Brissac and 
D'Epinay St. Luc stood in readiness to receive him. The night 
was dark and stormy \ thunder rumbled ; rain fell heavily ; the A.D. 1594. 

king was a little behind time. On the 22nd of March three of -^^^^7^^' 

. . enters 

the city gates were thrown open, and the king's troops entered paiis 

Paris. They occupied the different districts and met with no {^'^'^- 22). 

show of resistance but at the quay of L'Ecole, where an outpost of 

lanzknechts tried to stop them ; but they were cut in pieces or 

hurled into the river. Between five and six o'clock Henry IV., 

at the head of the last division, crossed the draw-bridge of the 

New Gate. Brissac, Provost L'Huillier, the sheriffs and several 

companies of burgesses advanced to meet him. At ten o'clock he 

was master of the whole city ; the districts of St. Martin, of the 

Temple, and St. Anthony alone remained still in the power of three 

thousand Spanish soldiers under the orders of their leaders, the 

duke of Feria and Don Diego d'Ibarra. Nothing would have been 

easier for Henry than to have had them driven out by his own 

troops and the people of Paris, who wanted to finish the day's 

work by exterminating the foreigners ; but he was too judicious 

and too far-sighted to embitter the general animosity by pushing 

his victory beyond what was necessary. He sent word to the 

Spaniards that they must not move from their quarters, and must 

leave Paris during the day, at the same time promising not to bear The 

arms any more against him, in France. They eagerly accepted Spanish 

these conditions. At three o'clock in the afternoon, ambassador, evacuate 

officers, and soldiers all evacuated Paris and set out for the Low the 

Countries. The king, posted at a window over the gate of St. "^^^ * * 

Denis, witnessed their' departure. They, as they passed, saluted 

him respectfully ; and he returned their salute, saying, " Go, 

gentlemen^ and commend me to your master ; but return no 

more." 



3 23 History of France. 

The other After his conversion to Catholicism, the capture of Paris was 
submit. ^'^ most decisive of the issues which made Henry IV. really king 
of France. The suhmission of Eouen followed almost immediately 
upon that of Paris; and the year 1594 brought Henry a series of 
successes, luilitary and civil, which changed very much to his advan- 
tage the position of the kingship as well as the general condition of 
the kingdom. In JSTormandy, in Picardy, in Champagne, in Anjou, 
in Poitou, in Brittany, in Orleanncss, in Auvergne, a multitude 
of important towns, Havre, Huntleur, Abbeville, Amiens, Perunne, 
Montdidier, Poitiers, Orleans, Riieims, Chateau-Thierry, Beauvais, 
Sens, Riom, Morlaix, Laval, Laou, returned to the king's authority, 
some after sieges, and others by pacific and personal arrangement, 
more or less buithensome for the public treasury but very effective 
in promoting the unity of the nation and of the monarchy. 
A.D. 1594. 'XJie close of this happy and glorious yeai* was at hand. On the 
Chaste! to 27th of September, between six and seven p.m., a deplorable 
murierths incident occurred, for the second time, to call Henry IV.'s attention 
<'Sem^2'J") ^'^ ^^ weak side of his position. An attempt upon his life had 
already been made by a fanatic named Barriere ; now it was a, young 
man of nineteen, son of a cloth-merchant in the city, who, acting 
under the influence of the Jesuits, tried to murder the king. He 
was arrested, and put to death, a decree of the parliament of Paris 
being at the same time (December 29, 1594) issued against the 
Jesuits. 

A.D. 1595. In the meanwhile Philip II. persisted in his active hostility 

War de- . . . 

Glared ^^^ continued to give the king of France no title but that oi ■prince 

against of Beam. On the 17th of January, 1595, Henry, in performance 
pain. ^£ what he had proclaimed, formally declared war against the king 
of Spain, forbade his subjects to have any commerce witli him or 
his allies, and ordered them to make war on him for the future, just 
as he persisted in making it on France. The conflict thus solemnly 
begun lasted three years and three months, from the 17th of 
January, 1595, to the 1st of May, 1598, from Henry IV.'s declara- 
tion of war to the peace of Vervins, which preceded by only four 
months and thirteen days the death of Philip II. and the end of 
the preponderance of Spain in Europe. It is not worth while to 
follow step by step the course of this monotonous conflict, pregnant 
with facts which had their importance for contemporaries but are 
A.D. 15r5. not worthy of an historical resurrection. The battle of Fon- 
Eatile of taine-Fran9aise (5th June) was a brilliant evidence that Navarre 
Irancaise whilst becoming a monarch had not forgotten to be a soldier. The 
(June 6). absolution at last granted by Pope Clement VIII. proved of the 
utmost benefit to the king ; Mayenne, d'Epernon and Joyeuse sub- 
mitted, and the town of Amiens having been taken by the royal 



Peace of Vervins. — Edict of Nantes. 329 

troops the duke de Mercoeur followed their example (February, 
1598). Three months after, the king of Spain at last consented to 
accept terms of agreement (Peace of Vervins, May 2) ; and as the 
promulgation of the edict of Xantes (April 13) had put an end to 
the wars of religion, so by the treaty with Philip II. a long period 
of foreign wars was terminated. 

A month before the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Yervins A.D. 1598. 
with Philip II., Henry IV. had signed and published at Paris on ^^^^e of 
the 13th of April, 1598, the edict of Infantes, his treaty of peace Edict of 
with the protestant malcontents. This treaty, drawn up in ninety- Nantes 
two open and fifty-six secret articles, was a code of old and new 
laws regulating the civil and religious position of Protestants iu 
Prance, the conditions and guarantees of their worship, their 
liberties and their special obligations in their relations whether 
with the crown or with their catholic fellow-countrymen. By this 
code Henry IV. added a great deal to the rights of the Protestants 
and to the duties of the State towards them. Their worship was 
authorized not only in the castles of the lords high-justiciary, who 
numbered 3500, but also in the castles of simple noblemen who 
enjoyed no high-justiciary rights, provided that the number of 
those present did not exceed thirty. Two towns or two boroughs, 
instead of one, had the same religious rights in each bailiwick or 
seneschalty of the kingdom. The State was charged with the 
duty of providing for the salaries of the protestant ministers and 
rectors in their colleges or schools, and an annual sum of 165,000 
livres of those times (495,000 francs of the present day) was 
allowed for that purpose. Donations and legacies to be so applied 
were authorized. The children of Protestants were admitted into 
the universities, colleges, schools and hospitals, without distinc- 
tion between them and Catholics. There was great difficulty in .^ ■ . 
securing for them, in all the parliaments of the kingdom, impartial clausas. 
justice; and a special chamber, called the edict chamber, was' 
instituted for the trial of all causes in which they were interested. 
Catholic judges could not sit in this chamber unless with their 
consent and on their presentation. In the parliaments of Bordeaux, 
Toulouse, and Grenoble, the edict-chamber was composed of two 
presidents, one a Catholic and the other a Reformer, and of twelve 
councillors, of whom six were Eeformers. The parliaments had 
hitherto refused to admit Reformers into their midst ; in the end 
the parliament of Paris admitted six, one into the edict-chamber acadi 
five into the appeal-chamber (enquetes). The edict of Nantes re- 
tained, at first for eight years and then for four more, in the hands 
of the Protestants the towns which war or treaties had jDut in their 
possession and which numbered, it is said, two hundred. The 



330 History of France. 

king was bound to bear the burthen of keepincf up their fortifi- 
cations and paying their garrisons ; and Henry IV. devoted to that 
object 540,000 livres of those times, or about two million francs of 
our day. 

Parliaments and Protestants, all saw that they had to do not 
only with a strong-willed king, but with a judicious and clear-sighted 
man, a true French patriot, who was sincerely concerned for the 
public interest and who had won his spurs in the art of governing 
parties by making for each its own place in the State. It was 
scarcely five years ago that the king who was now publishing the 
edict of Nantes had become a Catholic ; the parliaments enregistered 
the decree. The protestant malcontents resigned themselves to the 
necessity of being content with it. "Whatever their imperfections 
and the objections that might be raised to them, the peace of 
Vervins and the edict of JNantes were, amidst the obstacles and 
perils encountered, at every step by the government of Henry IV., 
the two most timely and most beneficial acts in the world for 
France. 

A.D. 1598. Four months after the conclusion of the treaty of Vervins, on 

Death of . . , . , 

Philip II. the 13th of September, 1598, Philip II. died at the Escurial, and 

(Sept. 13). on the 3rd of April, 1603, a second great royal personage. Queen 

Death of Elizabeth, disappeared from the scene. She had been, as regards 

Queen the Protestantism of Europe, what Philip 11. had been, as regards 

TAmil S") Catholicism, a powerful and able patron; but what Philip II. did 

from fanatical conviction, Elizabeth did from patriotic feeling ; she 

had small faith in Calvinistic doctrines and no liking for Puritanic 

sects ; the Catholic Church, the power of the pope excepted, was 

more to her mind than the Anglican Church, and her private 

preferences difiered greatly from her public practices. Thus at the 

beginning of the seventeenth century Henry IV. was the only one 

remaining of the three great sovereigns who, during the sixteenth. 

Policy of iiad disputed, as regarded religion and politics, the preponderance 

at home * ^"^ Europe. He had succeeded in all his kingly enterprises ; he had 

become a Catholic in France without ceasing to be the prop of the 

Protestants in Europe ; he had made peace with Spain without 

embroiling himself with England, Holland and Lutheran Germany. 

He had shot up, as regarded ability and influence, in the eyes of 

all Europe. It was just then that he gave the strongest proof of 

his great judgment and political sagacity ; he was not intoxicated 

with success ; he did not abuse his power ; he did not aspire to 

distant conquests or brilliant achievements ; he concerned himself 

chiefly with the establishment of public order in his kingdom and 

■with his people's prosperity. His well-known saying, " I want all 

my peasantry to have a fowl in the pot every Sunday," was a desire 



The ^' Grand Design!* 33 1 

■worth}"- of Louis XII. Henry IV. had a sympathetic nature ; his 
grandeur did not lead him to forget the nameless multitudes whose 
fate depended upon his government. He had, besides, the rich, 
productive, varied, inquiring mind of one who took an interest not 
only in the welfare of the French peasantry, but in the progress of 
the whole French community, progress agricultural, industrial, 
commercial, scientific, and literary. 

Abroad the policy of Henry IV. was as judicious and farsighted and 
as it was just and sympathetic, at home. There has been much xhe°^rand 
writing and dissertation about what has been called his grand design." 
design. This name has been given to a plan for the religious and 
political organization of Christendom, consisting in the division of 
Europe amongst three religions, the Catholic, the Calvinistic and 
the Lutheran, and into fifteen states, great or small, monarchical or 
republican, with equal rights, alone recognized as members of the 
Christian confederation, regulating in concert their common affairs 
and pacifically making up their differences, whilst all the while 
preserving their national existence. The grand design, so far as 
Henry IV. was concerned, was never a- definite project. His true 
external policy was much more real and practical. He had seen 
and experienced the evils of religious hatred and persecution. He 
had been a great sufferer from the supremacy of the House of 
Austria in Europe, and he had for a long while opposed it. When 
he became the most puissant and most regarded of European kings, 
he set his heart very strongly on two things, toleration for the three 
religions which had succeeded in establishing themselves in Europe 
and showing themselves capable of contending one against another, 
and the abasement of the House of Austria which, even after the 
death of Charles V. and of Philip II., remained the real and the 
formidable rival of France, The external policy of Henry IV., 
from the treaty of Vervins to his death, was religious peace in 
Europe and the alliance of Catholic France with Protestant England 
and Germany against Spain and Austria. He showed constant 
respect and deference towards the papacy, a power highly regarded 
in both the rival camps, though much fallen from the substantial 
importance it had possessed in Europe during the middle ages. 
French policy striving against Spanish policy, such was the true 
and the only serious characteristic of the grand design. 

Four men, very unequal in influence as well as merit. Sully, Advisersoi 
Villeroi, Du Plessis-Moruay, and D'Aubigne, did Henry IV. sully. 
effective service, by very different processes and in very different 
degrees, towards establishing and rendering successful this internal 
and external policy. Three were Protestants; Villeroi alone was 



332 



History of France. 



Villeroi. 



Tn Plessis- 
Mornay. 



gnppa 
Aabxgue 



a Catholic. Sully is beyond comparison with the other three. He 
is the only one whom Henry IV. called my friend ; the only one 
who had participated in all the life and all the government of 
Henry IV., his evil as well as his exalted fortunes, his most painful 
embarrassments at home as well as his greatest political acts ; the 
only one whose name has remained inseparably connected with 
that of a master whom he served without servility as well as with- 
out any attempt to domineer. 

Nicholas de Neufville, lord of Villeroi, who was born in 1543, 
and whose grandfather had been secretary of state under Francis I., 
was, whilst Henry III. was still reigning, member of a small 
secret council at which all questions relating to Protestants were 
treated of. Though a strict Catholic, and convinced that the king 
of France ought to be openly in the ranks of the Catholics, and 
to govern with their support, he sometimes gave Henry III. some 
free-spoken and wise counsels. Villeroi was a Leaguer of the 
patriotically French type. And so Henry IV., as soon as he was 
firm upon his throne, summoned him to his councils and confided 
to him the direction of foreign atfairs. The late Leaguer sat 
beside Sully, ai.d exerted himself to give the prevalence, in 
Henry IV.'s external policy, to catholic maxims and alliances, 
whilst Sully, remaining firmly protestant in the service of his king, 
turned catholic, continued to be in foreign matters the champion of 
protestant policy and alliances. 

Henry IV. made so great a case of Villeroi's co-operation and 
influence that, without loving him as he loved Sully, he upheld 
him and kept him as secretary of state for foreign affairs to the 
end of his reign. 

Philip du Plessis-Mornay occupied a smaller place than Sully 
and Villeroi in the government of Henry IV. ; but he held and 
deserves to keep a great one in the history of his times. He was 
the most eminent and also the most moderate of the men of 
profound piety and conviction of whom the Reformation had made 
a complete conquest, soul and body, and who placed their public 
fidelity to their religious creed above every other interest and every 
other affair in this world. Mornay had made up his mind to 
serve for ever a king who had saved his country. He remained 
steadfast and active in his faith, but without falling beneath the 
yoke of any narrow-minded idea, preserving his patriotic good 
sense in the midst of his fervent piety, and bearing with sorrow- 
ful constancy his friends' bursts of anger and his king's exhibitions 
of ingratitude. 

A third Protestant, Theodore Agrippa d'Aubignc, grandfather 




SULLY. 



Henry IV. separates from his wife. 333 

of Madarae de Maintcnon, has been reckoned here amongst, not tho 
councillors, certainly, hut the familiar and still celebrated servants 
of Henry IV. He held no great post and had no great influence 
with the king ; he was, on every occasion, a valiant soldier, a 
zealous Protestant, an indefatigable lover and seeker of adventure, 
sometimes an independent thinker, frequently an eloquent and 
bold speaker, always a very sprightly companion. If D'Aubigne 
had not been a writer, he would be completely forgotten by this 
time, like so many other intriguing and turbulent adventurers, 
who make a great deal of fuss themselves and try to bring every- 
thing about them into a fuss as long as they live, and who die 
without leaving any trace of their career. But D'Aubigne wrote 
a great deal both in prose and in verse ; he wrote the Histoire 
vniverselle of his times, personal Memoires, tales, tragedies, and 
theological and satirical essays ; and he wrote with sagacious, 
penetrating, unpremeditated wit, rare vigour, and original and 
almost profound talent for discerning and depicting situations and 
characters. It is the writer wdiich has caused the man to live and 
has assigned him a place in French literature even more than in 
French history. 

These politicians, these Christians, these warriors had, in 1600, ^jj jqqq 
a grave question to solve for Henry IV. and grave counsel to Henry IV. 
give him. He was anxious to separate from his wife, Mar- separatps 
guerite de Valois, who had, in fact, been separated from him for wife, 
the last fifteen years, was leading a very irregular life, and had not 
brought him any children. But, in order to obtain from the 
pope annulment of the marriage, it was first necessary that Mar- 
guerite should agree to it, and at no price would she yield, so 
long as tlie king's favourite continued to be Gabrielle d'Estrees, 
whom she detested and by whom Henry already had several chil- 
dren. The question arose in 1598 in connexion wdth a son lately 
born to Gabrielle, who was constantly spreading reports that she 
would be the king's wife. In consequence, however, of the 
favourite's sudden death (April 10th, 1599), the consent of Mar- 
guerite de Valois to the annulment of her marriage was obtained ; 
and negotiations were opened at Rome by Arnauld d'Ossat, who was 
made a cardinal, and by Brulart de Sillery, ambassador ad hoc. 

Clement VIII. pronounced on the 17th of December, 1599, and 
transmitted to Paris by Cardinal de Joyeuse the decree of annul- 
ment. On the 6th of January, 1600, Henry IV. gave his ambas- 
sador, Brulart de Sillery, powers to conclude at Florence his mar- 
riage with Mary de' Medici, daughter of Francis I. de' Medici, 
grand duke of Tuscany, and Joan, archduchess of Austria and 



334 



History of France. 



His mar- 
riage with 
Mary de' 
MedicL 



Biron's 
con- 
spiracy. 



niece of the grand duke Ferdinand I. de' Medici, who had often 
rendered Henry IV. pecuniary services dearly paid for. As early 
as the year 1592 there had been something said ahout this project 
of alliance ; it was resumed and carried out on the 5th of October, 
1600, at Florence, with lavish magnificence. Mary embarked at 
Leghorn on the 17th with a fleet of seventeen galleys ; that of 
which she was aboard, the General, was all covered over with 
jewels inside and out ; she arrived at Marseilles on the 3rd of 
November and at Lyons on the 2nd of December, where she waited 
till the 9th for the king, who was detained by the war with Savoy. 
He entered her chamber in the middle of the night, booted and 
armed, and next day, in the cathedral church of St. John, re-cele- 
brated his marriage, more rich in wealth than it was destined to be 
in happiness. 

Henry IV. seemed to have attained in his public and in his 
domestic life the pinnacle of earthly fortune and ambition. He 
was, at one and the same time, catholic king and the head of the 
Protestant polity in Europe, accepted by the Catholics as the best, 
the only possible, king for them in France. He was at peace 
with all Europe, except one petty prince, the duke of Savoy, 
Charles Emmanuel L, from whom he demanded back the mar- 
quisate of Saluzzo or a territorial compensation in France itself on 
the French side of the Alps. After a short campaign, and thanks 
to Eosny's ordnance, he obtained what he desired, and by a treaty 
of January 17, IGOl, he added to French territory La Bresse, Le 
Bugey, the district of Gex and the citadel of Bourg, which still 
held out after the capture of the town. He was more and more 
dear to France, to which he had restored peace at home as well as 
abroad, and industrial, commercial, financial, monumental and 
scientific prosperity, nntil lately unknown. SuUy covered the 
country with roads, bridges, canals, buildings and works of public 
utility. The conspiracy of his old companion in arms, Gontaut de 
Biron, proved to him, however, that he was not at the end of 
his political dangers, and the letters he caused to be issued (Sep- 
tember, 1603) for the return of the Jesuits did not save him 
from the attacks of religious fanaticism. 

The queen's coronation had been proclaimed on the 12th of 
May, 1610; she was to be crowned next day the 13th at St. 
Denis, and Sunday the 16th had been appointed for her to make 
her entry into Paris, On Friday the 14.th the king had an idea 
of going to the Arsenal to see Sully, Avho was ill; we have the 
account of this visit and of the assassination given by Malherbe, 
at that time attached to the service of Henry IV., in a letter 



Murder of Henry /F. 335 

written on the 19 th of May from the reports of eye- witnesses, 
and it is here reproduced word for word : — 

" The king set out soon after dinner to go to the Arsenal. He ^'g ' jy" 
dehbei'ated a long while whether he should go out, and several murdered 
times said to the queen, ' My dear, shall I go or not % ' He even 7. r"^' 
went out two or three times and then all on a sudden returned, (May 14). 
and said to the queen, ' My dear, shall I really go % ' and again he 
had doubts about going or remaining. At last he made up his 
mind to go, and having kissed the queen several times, bade her 
adieu. Amongst other things that were remarked he said to her, 
' I shall only go there and back ; I shall be here again almost 
directly.' When he got to the bottom of the steps where his car- 
riage was waiting for him, M. de Praslin, his captain of the guard, 
would have attended him, but he said to him, ' Get you gone ; I 
want nobody ; go about your business.' 

" Thus, having about him only a fevv gentlemen and some foot- 
men, he got into his carriage, took his place on the back seat at 
the left-hand side, and made M. d'Epernon sit at the right. IS'ext 
to him, by the door, were M. de Montbazon and M. de la Force ; 
and by the door on M. d'Epernon's side were Marshal de Lavardin 
and M. de Crequi ; on the front seat the marquis of Mirabeau and 
the first equerry. When he came to the Croix-du-Tiroir he was 
asked whither it was his pleasure to go ; he gave orders to go 
towards St. Innocent. On arriving at Rue de la Eerronnerie, which 
is at the end of that of St. Honore on the way to that of St. Denis, 
opposite the Salamandre he met a cart which obliged the king's j. ^ ^ 
carriage to go nearer to the ironmongers' shops which are on the given by 
St. Innocent side, and even to proceed somewhat more slowly, with- Malherbe. 
out stopping however, though somebody, who was in a hurry to 
get the gossip printed, has written to that effect. Here it was that 
an abominable assassin, who had posted himself against the 
nearest shop, which is that with the GcBur couronne perce d'une 
fieche, darted upon the king and dealt him, one after the other, 
two blows with a knife in the left side ; one, catching him between 
the arm-pit and the nipple, went upwards without doing more than 
graze ; the other catches him between the fifth and sixth ribs and, 
taking a downward direction, cuts a large artery of those called 
venous. The king, by mishap and as if to further tempt this 
monster, had his left hand on the shoulder of M. de Montbazon, 
and with the other was leaning on M. d'^pernon, to whom he was 
speaking. He uttered a low cry and made a few movements. 
M. de Montbazon having asked, ' What is the matter. Sir 1 ' he 
answered, * It is nothing,' twice; but the second time so low that 



335 



History of Finance. 



tliere was no making sure. These are the only words he spoke after 
he was wounded. 

"In a moment the carriage turned towards the Louvre. When 
he was at the steps where he had got into the carriage, which are 
those of the queen's rooms, some v/ine was given him. Of course 
some one had already run forward to bear the news. Sieur de 
Cerisy, lieutenant of M. de Praslin's company, having raised his 
head, he made a few movements with his eyes, then closed them 
immediately, without opening them again any more. He was carried 
upstairs by M. de Montbazon and Count de Curzon en Quercy and 
laid on the bed in his closet, and at two o'clock carried to the 
bed in his chamber, where he was all the next day and Sunday. 
Somebody went and gave him holy water. I tell you nothing about 
the queen's tears ; all that must be imagined. As for the people of 
Paris, I think they never wept so much as on this occasion." 

On the king's death — and at the imperious instance of the duke of 
Epernon, who at once introduced the queen, and said in open ses- 
sion, as he exhibited his sword, " It is as yet in the scabbard, but 
it will have to leap therefrom unless this moment there be granted 
to the queen a title which is her due according to the order of nature 
and of justice," — the Parliament forthwith declared Mary regent of 
the kingdom. Thanks to Sully's firm administration, there were, 
after the ordinary annual expenses were paid, at that time in the 
vaults of the Bastille or in securities easily realizable, forty-one 
million three hundred and forty-five thousand livres, and there was 
nothing to suggest that extraordinary and urgent expenses would 
come to curtail this substantial reserve. The army was disbanded 
and reduced to from twelve to fifteen thousand men, French or 
Swiss. For a long time past no power in France had, at its 
accession, possessed so much material strength and so much moral 
authority. Since the death of Henry IV., however, the king and 
court of France v/ere much changed : the great questions and the 
great personages had disappeared. The last of the real chiefs of 
the League, the brother of Duke Henry of Guise, the old duke of 
Mayenne, he on whom Henry, in the hour of victory, would wreak 
no heavier venj,eance than to walk him to a standstill, was dead. 
Henry IV.'s first wife, the sprightly and too facile Marguerite de 
Valois, was dead also, after consenting to descend from the throne 
in order to make way for the mediocre Mary de' Medici. The 
catholic champion whom Henry lY. lelicitated himself upon being 
able to oppose to Du Plessis-Mornay in the polemical conferences 
between the two communions. Cardinal de Perron, was at the point 
of death. The decay was general and the same amongst the Pro- 



The Conciiiis — The Spanish marriages. 337 

testants as amongst the Catliolics ; Sully and Mornay held, them- 
selves aloof or were barely listened to. In place of these eminent jj^g ^^^^ 
personages had come intriguing or ambitious subordinates, who were cinis. 
either innocent of, or indifferent to, anything like a great policy, and 
who had no idea beyond themselves and their fortunes. The chief 
amongst them were Leonora Galigai, daughter of the queen's nurse, 
and her husband, Concino Concini, son of a Florentine notary, both 
of them fuU of coarse ambition, covetous, vain and determined to 
make the best of their new position, so as to enrich themselves and 
exalt themselves beyond measure and at any price. The husband 
of Leonora Galigai, Concini, had amassed a great deal of money and 
purchased the marquisate of Ancre ; nay more, he had been created 
marshal of France. In his dread lest influence opposed to his own 
should be exercised over the young king, he took upon himself to 
regulate his amusements and his walks, and prohibited him from 
leaving Paris. Louis XIII. had amongst his personal attendants a 
young nobleman, Albert de Luynes, clever in training httle sporting 
birds, called hutcher-hirds {pies grieches or shrikes), then all the 
rage ; and the king made his falconer and lived on familiar terms 
with him. Playing at billiards one day. Marshal d' Ancre, putting 
on his hat, said to the king, "■ I hope your Majesty will allow me ^j^ ^ ^g^^ 
to be covered." The king allowed it ; but remained surprised and Conoxii 
shocked. His young page, Albert de Luynes, observed his displea- ^^*|^yf\ 
sure, and being anxious, himself also, to become a favourite, he took 
pains to fan it. A domestic plot was set hatching against Marshal 
d' Ancre, who was shot down on the bridge of the Louvre (April 
24, 1617) by M. de Vitry, captain of the g lard. Shortly after, 
Leonora Galigai, accused of witchcraft, was beheaded on the place 
de Greve, and her body committed to the flames. 

Concini and his wife, both of them, probably, in the secret ser- The 
vice of the court of Madrid, had promoted the marriage of Louis ^^^°.^^ 
XIII. with the Infanta Anne of Austria, eldest daugliter of Philip 
III. king of Spain, and that of Philip, Infanta of Spain, who was 
afterwards Philip IV., with Princess Elizabeth of France, sister of 
Louis XIII. Henry IV., in his plan for the pacification of Europe, 
had himself conceived this idea and testified a desire for this double 
piarriage, but without taking any trouble to bring it about. It was 
after his death that, on the 30th of April, 1612, Villeroi, minister 
of foreign affairs in France, and Don Inigo de Cardenas, ambassador 
of the king of Spain, concluded this double union by a formal 
deed. The two Spanish marriages were regarded in France as an 
abandonment of the national policy ; France was, in a great majority, 
catholic, but its Catholicism differed essentially from the ^Spanish 



338 



History of France. 



A.D. 1614. 
The StateS' 
general. 
Bicheliea. 



A D. iei6. 

l^ichelieu 
minister. 



Follows 
the Queen 
to Blois. 



Catholicism : a remedy was desired ; it was hoped that one vould 
he found in the convocation of the states-general of the kingdom, 
to Avhich the populace always looked expectantly ; they were con- 
voked first for the 16th of September, 1614, at Sens; and, after- 
wards, for the 20th of October following, when the young king, 
Louis XIIL, after the announcement of his majority, himself 
opened them in state. The chief political fact connected with the 
convocation of the States-general of 1614 was the entry into their 
ranks of the youthful bishop of LtiQon, Armand John du Plessis de 
Eichelieu, marked out by the finger of God to sustain, after the 
powerful reign of Henry IV. and the incapable regency of Mary de' 
Medici, the weight of the government of France. As he was born 
on the 5th of September, 1585, he was but 28 years old in 1614. 

He had even then acquired amongst the clergy and at the court 
of Louis XIII. sufficient importance to be charged with the duty of 
speaking in presence of the king on the acceptance of the acts of 
the council of Trent and on the restitution of certain property 
belonging to the Catholic Church in Beam. He made skilful use 
of the occasion for the purpose of stiU further exalting and improv- 
ing the question and his own position. He complained that for a 
long time past ecclesiastics had been too rarely summoned to the 
sovereign's councils ; he took care at the same time to make himself 
pleasant to the mighty ones of the hour ; he praised the young king 
for having, on announcing his majority, asked his mother to con- 
tinue to watch over France, and " to add to the august title 
oi mother of the lung that of mother of the Idngdom." The posb of 
almoner to the queen-regnant, Anne of Austria, was his reward. 
He carried still further his ambitious foresight; in Feb. 1615, at 
the time when the session of the states-general closed, ]\Iarshal 
d'Ancre and Leonora Galigai were still favoiirites with the queen- 
mother ; Eichelieu laid himself out to be pleasant to them, and 
received from the marshal in 1616 the post of Secretary of State 
for war and foreign affairs. Marshal d'Ancre was at that time look- 
ing out for supports against his imminent downfall. When, in 
1617, he fell and was massacred, people were astonished to find 
Eichelieu on good terms with the marshal's court-rival, Albert de 
Luynes, who pressed him to remain in the council at which he had 
sat for only five months. To accept the responsibility of the new 
favourite's accession was a compromising act ; Eichelieu judged it 
more prudent to remain bisliop of Lupon and to wear the ajDpear- 
ance of defeat by following Mary de' Medici to Blois, whither, since 
the fall of her favourites, she had asked leave to retire. He would 
there, he said, be more useful to the government of the young king ; 



Richelieu's cleverness. 339 

for, remaining at tlie side of Mary de' Medici, lie -would Tdo aWe to 
advise and restrain her. 

The astute minister contrived to interest hoth parties on his 
behalf. To the court he adduced his withdrawal from public 
business as a proof of the most absolute submission ; to Mary de' 
Medici he described it as the result of his unremitting zeal for her 
service, and as a new persecution on the part of her enemies. He 
thus contrived to weather the storm ; and when the excitement 
produced by the catastrophe of Concini had subsided, he looked 
round to see what could be done. We cannot enter here into the Manages 
particulars connected with the disgrace of the queen-mother. *° ^^^P <"^ 
Suffice it to say, that Eichelieu served her to the utmost of his ^itvi both 
power, and rendered her party so formidable, that it proved a parties. 
serious obstacle to the ambitious views of the new favourite. The 
Bishop of Lugon, through his determination, his intrigues, his 
unscrupulous conduct, had become a dangerous personage; he was 
first ordered to return to his priory at Coussay, then to his episcopal 
palace, and finally he was banished to Avignon. There he seemed 
determined upon leading a life of seclusion, and a casual observer, 
anxious to know how he spent his time, would have found him 
busily employed in writing theological works. This, of course, was 
merely a feint, designed to throw his enemies off their guard. 
Attention to his books did not prevent Eichelieu from watching 
the progress of events ; and when Mary de' Medici contrived to 
escape from Blois, he joined her without any further delay. By 
his influence, the whole of the Anjou nobility — the dukes de 
Longueville, de Bouillon, d'Epernon — rallied round the standard of 
the queen. A battle was fought at Pont-de-Ce, near Angers, 
where the rebel troops met with a signal defeat. A treaty, never- 
theless, concluded shortly after, secured to Eichelieu almost as 
many advantages, as if he, and not de Luynes, had triumphed. 
The queen received permission to return to court, with the full 
enjoyment of all the privileges and honours due to her rank ; and 
the king pledged himself to solicit a cardinal's hat for Eichelieu, 
whose niece. Mademoiselle de Pont-Courlay, married the marquis 
de Combalet, nephew of de Luynes (1619-20). 

Albert de Luynes came out of this crisis well content. He Albert de 
felicitated himself on the king's victory over the queen-mother, for I'Uyiies. 
he might consider the triumph as his own ; he had advised and 
supported the king's steady resistance to his mother's enterprises. 
Besides, he had gained by it the rank and power of constable ; it 
was at this period that he obtained them, thanks to the retirement 
of Lesdiguieres, who gave them up to assume the title of marshal- 

2 2 



340 History of France. 

general of tlie king's camps and armies. The royal favour did not 
stop there for Luynes ; the keeper of the seals, Du Yair, died in 
1621 ; and the king handed over the seals to the new constable, 
who thus united the military authoricy with that of justice, 
without being either a great warrior or a great lawyer. 

The favourite now turned his attention to the Protestants, and 
■ he pretended to compel those of Beam and ISTavarre to restore what 
he designed as secularized Church property. A general rising was 
the consequence; in order to quell it, de Luynes took the command 
of an army of 15,000 men and laid siege before Montauban. 
Sully and Duplessis-Mornay had vainly endeavoured to dissuade 
their fellow-religionists from publishing a declaration of indepen- 
dence ; and the marshal de Lesdiguieres and the duke de Bouillon 
having refused the dangerous part of leader of the movement, it 
■was accepted by the duke de Eohan. The siege of Montauban 
proved, however, more difficult than had been anticipated ; the 
royal troops were compelled to withdraAV ; and De Luynes, having 
caught fever whilst attacking the smaller town of Monheurt, on the 
banks of the Garonne, died on the 14th of December. 

Eichelieu, when he had become cardinal, premier minister of 
Louis XIII. and of the government of France, passed a just but 
severe judgment upon Albert de Luynes. " He was a mediocre 
and timid creature," he said, " faithless, ungenerous, too weak to 
remain steady against the assault of so great a fortune as that 
which ruined him incontinently ; allowing himself to be borne 
away by it as by a torrent, without any foothold, unable to set 
bounds to his ambition, incapable of arresting it and not knowing 
■what he was about, like a man on the top of a tower, whose head 
goes round and who has no longer any power of discernment. He 
would fain have been prince of Orange, count of Avignon, duke of 
Albret, king of Austrasia, and would not have refused more if he 
had seen his way to it." SJSlemoires de Richelieu, p. 169, in the 
Petitot Collection, series v., t. xxii.] 

This brilliant and truthful portrait lacks one feature which was 
the merit of the constable de Luynes : he saw coming, and he anti- 
cipated, a long way off, and to little purpose, but heartily enough, 
the government of Pi'ance by a supreme kingship, whilst paying 
respect, as long as he lived, to religious liberty and showing himself 
favourable to intellectual and literary liberty though he was 
opposed to political and national liberty. That was the govern- 
ment which, after him, was practised with a high hand and rendered 
triumphant by Cardinal Eichelieu to the honour, if not the hap- 
piness, of France. 



Richelieu and the aristocracy. 341 

Riclielieu, created a cardinal in 1622, set his face steadily against 
all the influences of the great lords; he broke them down one after 
anothor ; he persistently elevated the royal authority ; it was the 
hand ol Eichelieu which made the court and paved the way for 
the reign of Louis XIV. The Fronde was but a paltry interlude 
and a sanguinary game between parties. At Eichelieu's death, 
pure monarchy was founded. 

In the month of December, 1622, the work was as yet full of Cardinal 

difficulty. There were numei'ous rivals for the heritage of royal J^chelieu s 

•^ o J home 

favour that had slipped from the dying hands of Luynes. The policy. 

first victim of Eichelieu's stern home policy proved to be Colonel AD. 1626. 
Ornano, lately created a marshal at the duke of Anjou's request; he ^£''®^* °^ 
was arrested and carried off a prisoner "to the very room where, (Sept. 16). 
twenty-four years ago, Marshal Biron had been confined." For 
some time past " it had been current at court and throughout the 
kingdom that a great cabal was going on," says Eichelieu in his 
Memoires, " and the cabalists said quite openly that under his 
ministry, men might cabal with impunity, for he was not a 
dangerous enemy." If the cabalists had been living in that confi- 
dence, they were most wofully deceived. Eichelieu was neither 
meddlesome nor cruel, but he was pitiless towards the sufferings as 
well as the supplication of those who sought to thwart his policy. 
Thus again, Henry de Talleyrand, count of Chalais, master of the a.D. 1626. 
wardrobe, hare-brained and frivolous, had hitherto made himself -^-^^ °/ 
talked about only for his duels and his successes with women. He (Aug. 18). 
had already been drawn into a plot against the cardinal's life ; but, 
under the influence of remorse, he had confessed his criminal 
intentions to the minister himself. Eichelieu appeared touched, 
by the repentance, but he did not forget the offence, and his watch 
over this " unfortunate gentleman," as he himself calls him, made 
him aware before long that Chalais was compromised in an 
intrigue which aimed at nothing less, it was said, than to secure 
the person of the cardinal by means of an ambush, so as to get rid 
of him at need. Chalais was arrested in his bed on the 8fch of 
July, and condemned to death on the 18th of August 1626. 

At the outset of his ministry, in 1624, Eichelieu had obtained 
from the king a severe ordinance against duels, a fatal custom 
which was at that time decimating the noblesse. Already several 
noblemen, amongst others M. du Plessis-Praslin, had been deprived 
of their offices, or sent into exile in consequence of their duels, when Duels. 
M. de Bouteville, of the house of Montmorency, who had been BouteviUe 
previously engaged in twenty-one affairs of honour, came to Paris death, 
to fight the marquis of Beuvron on the Place Royale. The marquis's 



343 History of France. 

second, M. de Bussy d'Amboise, was killed by the count of 
Chapelles, Bouteville's second. Beuvron fled to- England. M. de 
Bouteville and hio comrade had taken post for Lorraine ; they 
were recognized and arrested at Vitry-le-Brule, and brought back to 
Paris ; and the king immediatiely ordered Parliament to bring 
them to trial. The ciime was flagrant, and the defiance of the 
king's orders undeniable ; but the culprit Avas connected with the 
greatest houses in the kingdom ; he had given strikiiig proofs of 
bravery in the king's service ; and all the court interceded for him. 
Parliament, with regret, pronounced condemnation, absolving the 
memory of Bussy d'Amboise, who was a son of President de 
Mesmes's wife, and reducing to one-third of their goods the confis- 
cation to which the condemned were sentenced. 

The cardinal had got Chalais condemned as a conspirator ; he 
had let Bouteville be executed as a duellist ; the greatest lords 
bent beneath his authority, but the power that depends on a king's 
favour is always menaced and tottering. The enemies of Eichelieu 
had not renou))ced the idea of overthrowing him, their hopes even 
v/ent on growing, ?ince, for some time past, the queen- mother had 
been waxing jealous of the all-powerful minister, and no longer 
A.D. 1630. made common cause with him. These reiterated attempts are sur- 

"Journee -g- enough: but what astonishes us most is that the con- 
dea Dupes ^ ° 3 ^ 

spirators should have allowed themselves to be led astray by Gaston, 

duke d'Orleans, — a man who, in the hour of danger, would not 
hesitate to betray his bosom-friend, if his own safety could be pur- 
chased at such a price. And yet they fell into the snare. The 
king was dangerously ill at Lyons ; they thought the opportunity 
too good to be lost ; and indeed managed so well that when the 
court returned to Paris, the cardinal's disgrace seemed inevitable. 
But he determined upon making a final effort, and securing an 
interview of a quarter of an hour with Louis XIII. at Versailles, he 
frightened the monarch, and left the palace as powerful as ever. 
" This coup d'etat,^' says M. Michelet, " was a perfect comedy : the 
cardinalists packed ofl" in the morning, and it was the turn of the 
royalists to make their exit in the evening" (1630). Marshal 
Marillac had to pay for the rest ; seized in the middle of his army, 
he was tried before a court composed of his private enemies, and in 
the cardinal's own palace, at Ruel. Of course, under such circum- 
stances, it was useless to expect mercy ; the unfortunate warrior 
was beheaded. In the meanwhile, what had become of Gaston ? 
Banished with his mother to Brussels, he felt at last some shame 
at not taking any personal part in the struggle against his enemy. 
Besides, the duke de Montmorency, governor of Languedoc, had 



Conspiracy of Cinq-Mars. 343 

informed him that his presence in the disaffected provinces would 
undoubtedly excite a general rebellion. Assisted by the duke de 
Lorraine, whose daughter he liad married, Gaston raised an army of 
brigands, as they have justly been termed. Unfortunately, in order 
to reach Languedoc, it was necessary that this select hand should A.D. 1632. 
cross France from north to south. Badly paid, badly fed, they ^^^ ^^ ^^ 
took to pillage by way of compensation, and thus materially dary. 
impaired the cause they were engaged to serve. A battle was 
fought at Castelnaudary (1632) ; the king's troops were victorious, 
and Montmorency shared the fate of Marillac, whilst Gaston 
d'Orleans " swore by the faith of a gentleman that he would ever 
be my lord the cardinal's best friend." 

Women filled but a short space in the life of Louis XIII. Twice, 
however, in that interval of ten years which separated the plot of 
Montmorency from that of Cinq-Mars, did the minister believe 
himself to be threatened by feminine influence ; and twice he used 
artifice to win the monarch's heart and confidence from two young 
girls of his court, Louise de Lafayette and Marie d'Hautefort. Both 
were maids of honour to the queen. 

Louis XIII.'s fancies were never of long duration, and his 
growing affection for young Cinq-Mars, son of Marshal d'Effiat, led 
him to sacrifice Mdllei. d'Hautefort. The cardinal merely asked 
him to send her away for a fortnight. She insisted upon hearing 
the order from the king's own mouth. " The fortnight will last all 
the rest of my life," she said : " and so I take leave of Your Majesty 
for ever." She went accompanied by the regrets and tears of Anne 
of Austria and leaving the field open to the new favourit-, the king's 
" rattle," as the cardinal called him. 

M. de Cinq-Mars was only nineteen when he was made master ^•^- ^^42. 
of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. Brilliant and witty, <,£ ciuq_ 
he amused the king and -occupied the leisure which peace gave Mars, 
him. By degrees he listened to the insinuations of those who were 
availing themselves of his popularity for the purpose of egging 
him on against the cardinal. 

Then began a series of negotiations and intrigues ; the duke of 
Orleans had come bark to Paris, the king was ill and the cardinal 
more so than he; thence arose conjectures and insensate hopes ; 
the duke of Bouillon, being sent for by the king, who confided to 
him the command of the army of Italy, was at the same time drawa 
into the plot, which was beginning to be woven against the minis- 
ter ; the duke of Orleans and the queen were in it ; and the town 
of Sedan, of which Bouillon was prince-sovereign, was wanted to 
serve the authors of the conspiracy as an asylum in case of 



344 History of France. 

reverse. Sedan alone was not sufficient ; there was need of an 

army. Whence was it to come ? Thoughts naturally turned 

towards Spain. A negotiation was therefore concluded at Madrid, 

Treaty by Fontrailles, in the name of the duke of Orleans, and a copy of 

With Spam. -^^ ^qq^^ found its way to Richelieu's study. 

The king could not believe his eyes ; and his wrath equalled his 
astonishment. Together with that of the grand equerry, he ordered 
the immediate arrest of M. de Thou, his intimate friend ; and the 
order went out to secure the duke of Bouillon, then at the head of 
the army of Italy. He, caught like Marshal Marillac in the midst 
of his troops, had vainly attempted to conceal himself; but he was 
taken and conducted to the castle of Pignerol. 

The most guilty, if not the most dangerous, of all the accom- 
plices. Monsieur, frightened to death, saw that treachery was safer 
than flight, and contrived to have an interview with his brother. 
He assured Louis XIII. of his fidelity; he intreated Chavigny, the 
minister's confidant, to give him " means of seeing his Eminence 
before he saw the king, in which case all would go weU." He 
appealed to the cardinal's generosity, begging him to keep his letter 
as an eternal reproach, if he were not thenceforth the most faithful 
and devoted of his friends. 

The two accused denied nothing : M. de Thou merely main- 
tained that he had not been in any way mixed up Avith the con- 
spiracy, proving that he had blamed the treaty with Spain, and that 
Death of ^^^^ °"-^y crime was not having revealed it. The last tragic scene was 
Cinq-Mars not destined to be long deferred; the very day on which the sentence 
was delivered saw the execution of it. " The grand equerry showed 
a never changing and very resolute firmness to the death, together 
with admirable calmness and the constancy and devoutness of a 
Christian," wrote M. de Marca, councillor of state, to the secretary 
of state Brienne ; and Tallemant des Reaux adds : " he died with 
astoundingly great courage and did not waste time in speechifying ; 
he would not have his eyes bandaged, and kept them open when 
the blow was struck."- M. de Thou said not a word save to God, 
repeating the Credo even to the very scaffold, with a fervour of 
devotion that touched all present. " We have seen," says a report 
of the time, " the favourite of the greatest and most just of kings 
lose his head upon the scaffold at the age of twenty-two, but with 
a firmness which has scarcely its parallel in our histories. We 
have seen a councillor of state die like a saint after a crime which 
men cannot justly pardon. There is nobody in the world who, 
knowing of their conspiracy against the State, does not think them 
worthy of death, and there will be few who, having knowledge of 



Last moments of the conspirators. 



345 



their ranlc and their fine natural qualities, will not mourn their sad 
fate." 

" E'ow that I make not a single step which does net lead me to 
death, I am more capable than anybody else of estimating the value 
of the things of the world," wrote Cinq-Mars to his mother, the 
wife of Marshal d'Effiat. " Enough of this world ; away to Para- 
dise ! " said M. de Thou, as he marched to the scaffold, Chalais 
and Montmorency had used the same language. At the last hour, 
and at the bottom of their hearts, the frivolous courtier and the 
hare-brained conspirator as well as the great soldier and the grave 
magistrate had recovered their faith in God. 





CHAPTER X. 



Riohelieii 
and the 
parlia- 
ments. 



Trials of 
Marillac 
and La 
Valette. 



BICHELIBU AND MAZARIN. 

The French, parliaments, and in particular the parliament of Paris, 
had often assumed the right, without the royal order, of summoning 
the princes, dukes, peers and officers of the crown to deliberate upon 
what was to be done for the service of the king, the good of the 
State, and the relief of the people. 

This pretention on the part of the parliaments was what Cardinal 
Eichelieu was continually fighting against. He would not allow 
the intervention of the magistrates in the government of the State. 
When he took the power into his hands, nine parliaments sat in 
France — Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Eouen, Aix, 
Eennes, and Pau : he created but one, that of Metz, in 1633, to 
sever in a definitive manner the bonds which still attached the 
three bishoprics to the Germanic Empire. Trials at that time were 
carried in the last resort to Spires. 

Throughout the history of France we find the parliament of 
Paris bolder and more enterprising than all the rest ; and it did 
not belie its character in the very teeth of Eichelieu. Symptoms 
of resistance manifested themselves after Dupes Daij, at the time 
of the trial of Marshal Marillac, and during that of the duke of 
La Yalette, third son of the duke of Epcrnon, accused, not without 
grounds, of having caused the failure of the siege of Fontarabia 
from jealousy towards the prince of Conde. The cup had over- 
flowed, and the cardinal resolved to put an end to an opposition 



The Parliaments. 347 

wliicli was the more iiTitating inasmuch as it was sometimes legi- 
timate. A notification of the king's, published in 1641, prohibited 
the parliament from any interference in affairs of state and admi- 
nistration. The cardinal had gained the victory ; parliament bowed 
the head ; its attempts at independence during the Fronde were but 
a flash, and the yoke of Louis XIV. became the more heavy for it. 
The pretensions of the magistrates were often foundationless, the 
restless and meddlesome character of their assemblies did harm to 
their remonstrances ; but for a long while they maintained, in the 
teeth of more and more absolute kingly power, the country's rights 
in the government, and they had perceived the dangers of that 
sovereign monarchy which certainly sometimes raises States to the 
highest pinnacle of their glory, but only to let them sink before 
long to a condition of the most grievous abasement. 

Though ever first in the breach, the parliament of Paris was 
not alone in its opposition to the cardinal. The parliament of Eouen 
had always passed for one of the most recalcitrant. The province ^^^ll^**** 
of jS'ormandy was rich and, consequently, overwhelmed with mandy. 
imposts ; and several times the parliament refused to enregister 
financial edicts which still further aggravated the distress of the 
people. In 1637, the king threatened to go in person to Eouen 
and bring the parliament to submission, whereat it took fright and 
enregistered decrees for twenty-two millions It was, no doubt, 
this augmentation of imposts that brought about the revolt of the 
Nu-pieds {Barefoots) in 1639. Before now, in 1624 and in 1637, 
in Perigord and Eouergue, two popular risings of the same sort, 
under the name of Cruquants {Paupers), had disquieted the authori. 
ties, and the governor of the province had found some trouble in 
putting them down. The Na pieds were more numerous and more 
violent still; from Eouen to Avranches all the country was a-blaze. , . 
At Coutances and at Vire, several monopoliers and gaheleurs, as the pieds." 
fiscal officers were called, were massacred ; a great number of 
houses were burnt, and most of the receiving-offices were pulled 
down or pillaged. Every wliere the army of suffering {armee de 
souffrance), the name given by the revolters to themselves, made 
appeal to violent passions ; popular rhymes were circulateil from 
hand to hand, in the name of General Nu-pieds {Barefoot), an 
imaginary personage whom nobody ever saw. 

Colonel Gassion, a good soldier and an inflexible character, was 
sent to put down the rebellion. First at Caen, then at Avranches, 
where there was fighting to be done, at Coutances and at Elbeuf, 
Gassion's soldiery everywhere left the country behind them in sub- 
jection, in ruin and in despair. They entered Eouen on the 3ist 



348 



History of France. 



of December, 1639, and on the 2nd of January, 1640, the chan- 
cellor himself arrived to do justice on the rebels heaped up in the 
prisons, whom the parliament dared not bring up for judgment. 
" I come to Eouen," he said on entering the town, " not to 
deliberate, but to declare and execute the matters on which my 
mind is made up." Rouen had to pay imposts to the amount of 
more than three millions. The province and its parliament were 
henceforth reduced to submission. 
The States It was not only the parliaments that resisted the efforts of Car- 
provincial, fiinal Eichelieu to concentrate all the power of the government in 
the hands of the king. From the time that the sovereigns had 
given up convoking the states-general, the states-provincial had 
alone preserved the right of bringing to the foot of the throne the 
plaints and petitions of subjects. Unhappily few provinces enjoyed 
this privilege ; Languedoc, Brittany, Burgundy, Provence, Dau- 
phiny, and the count ship of Pau alone were states-districts, that is 
to say, allowed to tax themselves independently and govern them- 
selves to a certain extent. ISTormandy, though an elections-district, 
and, as such, subject to the royal agents in respect of finance, had 
states which continued to meet even in 1666. The states-provincial 
were always convoked by the king, who fixed the place and duration 
of assembly. 

The composition of the states-provincial varied a great deal, 
according to the district. In Brittany all noblemen settled in the 
province had the right of sitting, whilst the third estate were repre- 
sented by only forty deputies. In Languedoc, on the contrary, the 
nobility had but twenty-three representatives, and the class of the 
third estate numbered sixty-eight deputies. Hence, no doubt, the 
divergences of conduct to be remarked in those two provinces 
between the parliament and the states- provincial. In Languedoc, 
even during Montmorency's insurrection, the parliament remained 
faithful to the king and submissive to the cardinal, whilst the 
states declared in favour of the revolt : in Brittany, the parliament 
thwarted Richelieu's efforts in favour of trade, which had been 
enthusiastically welcomed by the states. 

As a sequel to the systematic humiliation of the great lords, 
even when provincial governors, and to the gradual enfeeblement 
of provincial institutions, Richelieu had to create in all parts of 
France, still so diverse in organization as well as in manners, repre- 
sentatives of the kingly power, of too modest and feeble a type to 
do without him, but capable of applying his measures and making 
his wishes respected. Before now the kings of France had several 
times over perceived the necessity of keeping up a supervision 



Beforms 
in the 
adminis- 
tration. 



The administration. 349 

over the Cvondnct of their officers in the provinces. The inquisitors 
(enqnesteAirs) of St. Louis, the ridings of the revising-niasters {die- 
vaucJiees ties maitres des requetv^), the departmental commissioners 
(commissaires departis) of Charles IX., were so many temporary 
and travelling inspectors, whose duty it was to inform the king of 
the state of affairs throiighont the kingdom. Eichelieu sub- 
stituted for these shifting commissions a fixed and regular insti- 
tution, and in 1637 he established in all the provinces overseers of Overseers 
justice, p)olice, and finance, who were chosen for the most part from i,i^^l^"i 
amongst the burgesses, and who before long concentrated in their 
hands the whole administration and maintained the struggle of the 
kingly power against the governors, the sovereign courts and the 
states-provincial. 

At the time when the overseers of provinces were instituted, the 
battle of pure monarchy was gained ; Eichelieu had no further need 
of allies, he wanted mere subjects; but at the beginning of his 
ministry he had felt the need of throwing himself sometimes for 
support on the nation, and this great foe of the states-general had 
twice convoked the assembly of notables. The first took place at 
Fontainebleau, in 1625-6, and the second, during the following 
year, after the conspiracy of Chalais. The assembly was favourable 
to his measures ; but amongst those that it rejected was the pro- 
posal to substitute loss of offices and confiscation for the penalty of 
death in matters of rebellion and conspiracy. "Better a moderate 
but certain penalty," said the cardinal, "than a punishment too 
severe to be always inflicted." It was the notables who preserved 
in the hands of the inflexible minister the terrible weapon of which 
he availed himself so often. The assembly separated on the 24th 
of February, 1627, the last that was convoked before the revolution, 
of 1789. It was in answer to its demands, as well as to those of 
the states of 1614, that the keeper of the seals, Michael Marillac, 
drew up, in 1629, the important administrative ordinance which «Code 
has preserved from its author's name the title of Code Micliau. Michau." 

The cardinal had propounded to the notables a question which 
he had greatly at heart, the foundation of a navy. Harbours The navy. 
repaired and fortified, arsenals established at various points on the 
coast, organization of marine regiments, foundation of pilot-schools, 
in fact, the creation of a powerful marine which, in 1642, numbered 
63 vessels and 22 galleys, that left the roads of Barcelona after the 
rejoicings for the capture of Perpignan and arrived the same 
evening at Toulon — such were the fruits of Eichelieu's adminis- 
tration of naval affairs. So much progress on every point, so 
many efforts in all directions, 85 vessels afloat, a hundred regiments 



350 History of France. 

of infantry, and 300 troops of cavalry, almost constantly on a war- 
footing, naturally entailed enormous expenses and terrible burthena 
on the'people. It was Eichelieu's great fault to be more concerned 
about liis object than scrupulous as to the means he employed for 
arriving at it. His principles were as harsh as his conduct. 

Let us turn, now, to ecclesiastical afiairs, Eichelieu laboured 
for Catholicism whilst securing for himself Protestant alliances, and 
if the independence of his mind caused him to feel the necessity 
for a reformation, it was still in the Church and by the Church 
that he would have had it accomplished, 
The The oratorical and political brilliancy of the Catholic Church in 

* the reign of Louis XIV. has caused men to forget the great 
religious movement in the reign of Louis XIII. Learned and 
mystic in the hands of Cardinal BeruUe, humane and charitable 
with St. Vincent de Paul, bold and saintly with M. de Saint-Cyran, 
the Church underwent from all quarters quickening influences 
which roused her from her dangerous lethargy. The effort was 
•attempted at all points at once. Mid all the diplomatic negotiations 
which he undertook in Richelieu's name and the intrigues he, with 
the queen-mother, often hatched against him, Cardinal BeruUe 
Cardinal de founded the congregation of the Oratory, designed to train up well- 
Berulle. informed and pious young priests with a capacity for devoting 
themselves to the education of children as well as the edification 
of the people. It was, again, under his inspiration the order of 
Carmelites, hitherto confined to Spain, was founded in Prance. 
The convent in Rue St. Jacques soon numbered amongst its 
penitents women of the highest rank. 
St. Vincent -jhe labours of Mgr. de Berulle tended especially to the salvation 
of individual souls ; those of St. Vincent de Paul embraced a 
vaster field, and one offering more scope to Christian humanity. 
Some time before, in 1610, St. Francis de Sales had founded, under 
the direction of Madame de Chantal, the order of Visitation, whose 
duty was the care of the sick and poor ; he had left the direction 
of his new institution to M. Vincent, as was at that time the 
appellation of the poor priest without birth and without fortune 
who was one day to be celebrated throughout the world under the 
name of St. Vincent de Paul. This direction was not enough to 
satisfy his zeal for charity ; children and sick, the ignorant and the 
convict, all those who suffered in body or spirit, seemed to 
summon M. Vincent to their aid; he founded in 1617, in a small 
parish of Bresse, the charitable society of Servants of the Poor, 
which became in 1633, at Paris, under the direction of Madame 
Legras, niece of the keeper of the seals Marillac, the sisterhood of 



The Church. 351 

Servants of the Sick Poor and the cradle of the Sisters of Charity. 
St. Vincent do Paul had confidence in human nature, and every- 
where on his path sprang up good works in response to his appeals ; 
the foundation of Mission-priests or Lazarists, designed originally 
to spread about in the rural districts the knowledge of God, still His works 
testifies in the East, whither they carry at one and the same time °^ chanty, 
the Gospel and the name of France, to that great awakening of 
Christian charity which signalized the reign of Louis XIII. The 
same inspiration created the seminary 0/ St. Sulpice, by means of 
M. Olier's solicitude, the brethren of Christian Doctrine and the 
Ursulines, devoted to the education of childhood, and so many other 
charitable or pious establishments, noble fruits of devoutness and 
Christian sacrifice. 

ISTowhere was this fructuating idea of the sacrifice, the immolation St. Cyran 
of man for God and of the present in prospect of eternity, more ^pQ-* ^ 
rigorously understood and practised than amongst the disciples of royalists. 
John du Yergier de Hauranne, abbot of St. Cyran. Victories 
gained over souls are from their very nature of a silent sort : but 
M. de St. Cyran was not content with them. He wrote also, and 
his book, " Petrns Aurelius," published under the veil of the 
anonymous, excited a great stir by its defence of the rights of 
the bishops against the monks and even against the pope. The 
Galilean bishops welcomed at that time with lively satisfaction, 
its eloquent pleadings in favour of their cause. But, at a later 
period, the French clergy discovered in St. Cyran's book free- 
thinking concealed under dogmatic forms. "In case of heresy any 
Christian may become judge," says Petrus Aurelius. Who, then, 
should be commissioned to define heresy? So M. de St. Cyran 
was condemned. ^ 

He had been already signalled out as dangerous by an enemy more 
formidable than the assemblies of the clergy of France. Cardinal 
Richelieu, naturally attracted towards greatness as he was at a later 
period towards the infant prodigy of the Pascals, had been desirous 
of attaching St. Cyran to himself. " Gentlemen," said he one day as 
he led back the simple priest into the midst of a throng of his 
courtiers, " here you see the most learned man in Europe." But the St. Cyran 
abbot of St. Cyran would accept no yoke but God's : he remained ?'.'^^ Biche- 
independent and perhaps hostile, pursuing, without troubling him- 
self about the cardinal, the great task he had undertaken. Having 
had, for two years past, the spiritual direction of the convent of Port 
Eoyal, he had found in Mother Angelica Arnauld, the superior and 
reformer of the monastery, in her sister, Mother Agnes, and in the 
nuns of their order, souls worthy of him and capable of tolerating 
his austere instructions. 



352 History of France. 

Before long lie had seen forming, beside Port Royal and in tbe 
solitude of the fields, a nucleus of penitents, emulous of the hermits 
of the desert. M. le Maitre, Mother Angelica's nephew, a cele- 
brated advocate in the parliament of Paris, had quitted all •' to have 
no speech but with God." A lioioling (j-ngissant) penitent, he had 
Tie drawn after him his brothers, MM. de Sacy and de Sericourt, and, 
Arnaulds. ere long, young Lancelot, the learned author of Greek roots: all 
steeped in the rigours of penitential life, all blindly submissive to 
M. de St. Cyran and his saintly requirements. The director's 
power over so many eminent minds became too great. The king, 
being advertised, commanded him to be kept a prisoner in the Bois 
de Yincennes, where he remained up to the death of Cardinal Riche- 
lieu ; the seclusionists of Port Eoyal were driven from their retreat 
and obliged to disperse. 

Cardinal Richelieu dreaded the doctrines of M. de St. Cyran, 
and still more those of the reformation, which went directly to the 
emancipation of souls ; but he had the wit to resist ecclesiastical 
encroachments, and, for all his being a cardinal, never did minister 
maintain more openly the independence of the civil power. " The 
king, in things temporal, recognizes no sovereign save God." That 
had always been the theory of the Galilean Church. " The Church 
of France is in the kingdom, and not the kingdom in the Church," 
said the jurisconsult Loyseau, thus subjecting ecclesiastics to the 
common law of all citizens. 
Galli- jjjQ French clergy did not understand it so ; they had recourse 

Church.' to the liberties of the Galilean Church in order to keep up a certain 
and State measure of independence as regarded Rome, but they would not 
give up their ancient privileges, and especially the right of taking 
9 an independent share in the public necessities without being taxed 
as a matter of law and obligation. Here it was that Cardinal 
Richelieu withstood them : he maintained that, the ecclesiastics and 
the brotherhoods not having the right to hold property in France 
by mortmain, the king tolerated their possession, of his grace, but 
he exacted the payment of seignorial dues. The clergy at that 
time possessed more than a quarter of the property in France ; the 
tax to be paid amounted, it is said, to eighty millions. The 
subsidies further demanded reached a total of eight millions six 
hundred livres. 

The clergy in dismay wished to convoke an assembly to deter- 
mine their conduct; and after a great deal of difficulty it was 
authorized by the cardinal ; they consented to pay five millions 
and a half, the sum to which the minister lowered his pretensions. 
"The wants of the State," says Richelieu, "are real; those of the 
Church are fanciful and arbitrary; if the king's armies had 



The Protestants. — The duke of Rohan. 353 ' 

not repulsed the enemy, the clergy would have suffered far 
mere." 

Whilst the cardinal imposed upon the French clergy the ohliga- The Pro- 
tions common to all subjects, he defended the kingly power testants. 
and majesty against the ultramontanes, and especially against the 
Jesuits ; finally he turned his attentioii to the submission of the 
Protestants. It was State within State that the reformers were 
seeking to found, and that the cardinal wished to upset. After 
the death of Du Plessis-Mornay, the direction of the party fell 
entirely into the hands of the duke of Eohan, a fiery temper and 
soured by misfortunes as well as by continual efforts made on the 
part of his brother the duke of Soubise, more restless and less 
earnest than he. Hostilities broke out afresh at the beginning of 
the year 1625. The peace of Montpellier had left the Protestants 
only two surety-places, Montauban and La Eochelle ; and they 
clung to them with desperation. On the 6th of January, 1625, 
Soubise suddenly entered the harbour of Le Blavet Avith twelve 
vessels, and seizing without a blow the royal ships, towed them off 
in triumph to La Eochelle, a fatal success which was to cost that 
town dear. 

The royal navy had hardly an existence ; after the capture a.D. 1625. 
made by Soubise, help had to be requested from England and Hoi- ^^^'^ of I'^ 
land ; the marriage of Henrietta of France, daughter of Henry IV., 
with the prince of Wales, who Avas soon to become Charles I., was 
concluded ; the English promised eight ships ; the treaties with the 
United Provinces obliged the Hollanders to supply twenty, which 
they would gladly have refused to send against their brethren, if 
they could ; the cardinal even required that the ships should be 
commanded by French captains. The siege of La Eochelle has 
become famous in history ; it lasted thirteen months, and the un- 
fortunate Huguenots had to surrender, in spite of the heroism of 
Guiton, the mayor of the town, assisted by the unfl.inching energy 
of the old Duchess of Eohan. 

With La Eochelle fell the last bulwark of religious liberties. 
Single-handed, duke Henry of Eohan now resisted at the head of a 
handful of resolute men. But he was about to be crushed in his 
turn. The capture of La Eochelle had raised the cardinal's power 
to its height; it had, simultaneously, been the death-blow to the 
huguenot party and to the factions of the grandees. Town after Rohan 
town, " fortified huguenot-wise," surrendered, opening to the royal ^^gs for 
armies the passage to the Cevennes. The duke of Eohan, who had 
at first taken position at Nimes, repaired to Anduze for the defence 
of the mountains, the real fortress of the reformation in Languedoc. 

A A 



354 



History of France. 



A.D. 1629 
Edict of 
grace. 



Bohan 
leaves 
France. 



AD 1638. 
Eis death, 



Alais itself "had just opened its gates. Eohan saw that he could no 
longer impose the duty of resistance upon a people weary of suffer- 
ing, " easily believing ill of good folks and readily agreeing with 
those whiners who blame everything and do nothing." He sent 
" to the king, begging to be received to mercy, thinking it better 
to resolve on peace, whilst he could still make some show of being 
able to help it, than to be forced, after a longer resistance, to sur- 
render to the king with a rope round his neck." The cardinal 
advised the king to show the duke grace, " well knowing that, 
together with him individually, the other cities, whether they 
wished it or not, would be obliged to do the like, there being but 
little resolution and constancy in people deprived of leaders, espe- 
cially Mdien they are threatened with immediate harm and see no 
door of escape open." 

The general assembly of the reformers, which was then in meet- 
ing at Nimes, removed to A.nduze to deliberate with the duke of 
Eohan ; a wish was expressed to have the opinion of the province 
of the Cevennes, and all the deputies repaired to the king's pre- 
sence. No more surety- towns ; fortifications everywhere razed, at 
the expense and by the hands of the reformers ; the catholic worship 
re-established in all the churches of the reformed towns ; and, at 
this price, an amnesty granted for all acts of rebellion, and religious 
liberties confirmed anew — such were the conditions of the j)eace 
signed at Alais on the 28th of June, 1629, and made public the 
following month at l^imes under the name of Edict of grace. Mon- 
tauban alone refused to submit to them. 

The duke of Eohan left France and retired to Venice, where his 
wife and daughter were awaiting him. He had been appointed by 
the Venetian senate generalissimo of the forces of the republic, 
when the cardinal, who had no doubt preserved some regard for 
his military talents, sent him an offer of the command of the king's 
troops in the Valteline. There he for several years maintained the 
honour of France, being at one time abandoned and at another 
supported by the cardinal, who ultimately left him to bear the 
odium of the last reverse. Meeting with no response from the 
court, cut off from every resource, he brought back into the 
district of Gex the French troops driven out by the Grisons them- 
selves, and then retired to Geneva. Being threatened with the 
king's wrath, he set out for the camp of his friend Duke Bernard 
of Saxe-Weimar ; and it was whilst fighting at his side against 
the imperialists that he received the wound of which he died in 
Switzerland on the 16th of April, 1638. His body was removed 
to Geneva amidst public mourning. A man of distinguished mind 



Foreign politics. 355 

and noble character, often wild in his views and hopes, and so 
deeply absorbed in the interests of his party and of his Church, 
that he had sometimes the misfortune to forget those of his country. 

Meanwhile the king had set out for Paris, and the cardinal was 
marching on Montauban. Being obliged to halt at Pezenas because 
he had a fever, he there received a deputation from Montauban, 
asking to ha/ve its fortifications preserved. On the minister's 
formal refusal, supported by a movement in advance on the part of ™°^**^* 
Marshal Bassompierre with the army, the town submitted- unre- Castres 
servedly ; the fortifications of Castres were already beginning to surrender, 
fall ; and the huguenot party in France was dead. Deprived of the 
political guarantees which had been granted them by Henry IV., 
the reformers had nothing for it but to retire into private life. 
This was the commencement of their material prosperity ; they 
henceforth transferred to commerce and industry all the intel- 
ligence, courage and spirit of enterprise that they had but lately 
displayed in the service of their cause, on the battle field or in the 
cabinets of kings. 

" From that time," says Cardinal Richelieu, " difference in re- 
ligion never prevented me from rendering the huguenots all sorts 
of good offices, and I made no distinction between Frenchmen but 
in respect of fidelity." A grand assertion, true at bottom, in spite 
of the frequent grievances which the reformers had often to make 
the best of; the cardinal was more tolerant than his age and his 
servants ; what he had wanted to destroy was the political party j 
he did not want to drive the reformers to extremity, nor force 
them to fly the country. 

Everywhere in Europe were marks of Richelieu's handiwork. 
" There must be no end to negotiations near and far," was his K.ichelieu 
saying : he had found negotiations succeed in France ; he extended foreign 
his views ; numerous treaties had already niarked the early years afaira. 
of the cardinal's power; and, after 1630, his activity abroad was 
redoubled. Between 1623 and 1642 seventy-four treaties were 
concluded by Richelieu : four with England ; twelve with the 
United Provinces ; fifteen with the princes of Germany ; six with 
Sweden; twelve with Savoy; six with the Republic of Venice; 
three with the pope ; three with the emperor ; two with Spain ; 
four with Lorraine; one with the Grey Leagues of Switzerland; 
one with Portugal ; two with the revolters of Catalonia and Rous- 
sillon ; one with Russia ; two with the emperor of Morocco ; such 
■was the immense network of diplomatic negotiations whereof the 
cardinal held the threads during nineteen years. 

The foreign policy of Richelieu was a continuation of that of 

A A 2 



556 



History of France. 



Marriage 
of the 
Princess 
Henrietta 
Maria. 



Henry lY. ; it was to protestant alliances that he looked for 
support in order to maintain the struggle against the House of 
Austria, whether the German or the Spanish branch. In order to 
give his views full swing, he waited till he had conquered the 
huguenots at home ; nearly all his treaties with protestant powers 
are posterior to 1630. So soon as he was secure that no political 
discussions in France itself would come to thwart his foreign designs, 
he marched with a firm step towards that enfeehlement of Spain 
and th%,t upsetting of the empire of which ISTani speaks; Henry IV. 
and Queen Elizabeth, pursuing the same end, had sought and 
found the same allies ; Richelieu had the good fortune, beyond 
theirs, to meet, for the execution of his designs, with Gustavus 
Adolphus, king of Sweden. 

The marriage of Henry IV.'s daughter with the prince of Wales 
was, in Eichelieu's eyes, one of the essential acts of a policy neces- 
sary to the greatness of the kingship and of France. He obtained 
the best conditions possible for the various interests involved, but 
without any stickling and without favour for such and such an one 
of these interests, skilfully adapting words and appearance but 
determined upon attaining his end. IS^egotiated and concluded by 
Cardinal Kichelieu, with the assistan'-e of Cardinal de Berulle, this 
event was the open declaration of the fact that the style of Protes- 
tant or Catholic was not the supreme law of policy in Christian 
Europe, and that the interests of nations should not remain 
subservient to the religious faith of the reigning or governing 
personages. 

Spain had always been the great enemy of France, and her 
humiliation was always the ultimate aim of the cardinal's foreign 
policy ; the struggle, power to power, between France and Spain 
explains, during that period, nearly all the political and military 
complications in Europe. There was no lack of pretexts for bring- 
ing it on. The first was the question of the Valteline, a lovely 
and fertile valley, which, extending from the Lake of Como to the 
Tyrol, thus serves as a natural communication between Italy and 
Germany. Possessed but lately, as it was, by the Grey Leagues of 
the protestant Swiss, the Yalteline, a catholic district, had revolted 
at the instigation of Spain in 1620 ; the emperor, Savoy and Spain 
wanted to divide the spod between them ; when France, the 
old ally of the Grisons, interfered, and, in 1623, the forts of 
the Yalteline had been entrusted on deposit to the pope. Urban 
YIIL He still retained them in 1624, when the Grison lords, 
seconded by a French reinforcement tinder the orders of the marquis 
of Coeuvres, attacked the feeble garrison of the Yalteline ; in a few 



Treaties of Suza and Cherasco. 357 

days they were masters of all the places iu the canton, and the A.D, 162S. 

enemies were compelled to sign the peace of Mon9on (1626). The L^'^*'® 
Grisons remained in possession of the Yalteline, Austria ceased to 
communicate with Spain, and Richelieu found himself, so to say, 
on the road to Vienna. The question of the succession to the 
duchy of Mantua enabled him to take another step forward. 

Whilst the cardinal was holding La Eochelle besieged, the duke 
of Mantua had died in Italy, and his natural heir, Charles di Gon- 
zaga, who was settled in France with the title of Duke of i^evers, 
had hastened to put himself in possession of his dominions. Mean- 
while the duke of Savoy claimed the niarquisate of Montferrat : 
the Spaniards supported him ; they entered the dominions of the 
duke of Mantua and laid siege to Casale, When La Eochelle suc- 
cumbed, Casale was still holding out ; but the duke of Savoy had 
already made himself master of the greater part of Montferrat ; the 
duke of Mantua claimed the assistance of the king of France, whose 
subject he was ; here was a fresh battle-field against Spain ; and, 
scarcely had he been victorious over the Eochellese, when the king 
was on the march for Italy. The duke of Savoy refused a passage 
to the royal army, which found the defile of Suza Pass fortified 
Avith three barricades. The French dashed forward, stormed the 
barricades, and entered Suza. The siege of Casale was raised, and, 
by virtue of the treaty of Suza the duchy of Mantua was secured to ^ « igoa 
Richelieu's protege, the Duke of Nevers. Scarcely, however, had Treaty of 
Louis XIII. re-crossed the Alps when an imperialist army advanced /-ii/"^^',-. 
into the Grisons and, supported by the celebrated Spanish general 
Spinola, laid siege to Mantua. Richelieu did not hesitate : he 
entered Piedmont in the month of March, 1630, to march before 
long on Pignerol, an important place commanding the passage of 
the Alps j it, as well as the citadel, was carried in a few days ; the 
result of this fresh interposition was the treaty of Cherasco (1630) Treaty of* 
where the young Giulio Mazarini won his spurs as an able and sue- Cherasco. 
cessful diplomatist. 

The House of Austria, in fact, was threatened mortally. For The Thirty 
two years Cardinal Richelieu had been labouring to carry war into •m^^ 
its very heart. The thirty years' war, now raging in aU its fury, 
had increased a hundred-fold the emperor's power. Tilly, Wallen- 
stein, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, were upholding, sword in hand, on 
many battle-fields, the destinies of the House of Austria. Riche- 
lieu's genius and activity checked the progress of the great impe- 
rialist generals, and opposed to them a warrior who, in his short 
career, abundantly proved that a clever system of tactics does not 
always ensure success. Gustavus Adolphus, the hero of Zutphen, 



35^ History of France. 

fought at the same time the hattles of Richelieu and those of the 
protestant cause. After the death of the king of Sweden, the posi- 
tion of France hecame for awhile extremely difficult. The impe- 
rialists assumed the offensive ; they entered France by Burgundy 
and hy Picardy. If Bernard of Saxe- Weimar had not gained the 
two hattles of Eheinfeld and Brissach, it is impossible to conjecture 
what would have been the issue. In the year 1640, however, 
Eichelieu adopted a more expeditious plan : he occupied the 
Spaniards at home by sending support to the rebels of Catalonia 
and of Portugal ; whilst, to retaliate, the government of Madrid 
espoused the cause of the Duke of Orleans, and prepared the catas- 
trophe which was to impart such a tragic feature to the last moments 
of the great Cardinal. For several months past, Eichelieu's health, 
always precarious, had taken a serious turn ; it was from his sick- 
bed that he, a prey to cruel agonies, directed the movements of the 
army and, at the same time, the prosecution of Cinq-Mars. All at 
A.D. 1642, once his chest was attacked ; and the cardinal felt that he was 
Eicbelieu ^J^o- ^^ ^^ 2nd of December, 1642, public prayers were ordered 
(Dec. 3). in all the churches ; the king went from St. Germain to see his 
minister. The cardinal was quite prepared. " I have this satisfac- 
tion," he said, " that I have never deserted the king, and that ] 
leave his kingdom exalted and all his enemies abased." He com- 
mended his relatives to his Majesty, " who on their behalf will 
remember my services ;" then, naming the two secretaries of state, 
Chavigny and De Jfoyers, he added : " Your Majesty has Cardinal 
Mazarin ; I believe him to be capable of serving the king." And 
he handed to Louis XIII. a proclamation which he had just pro- 
pared for the purpose of excluding the duke of Orleans from any 
right to the regency in case of the king's deatb. The preamble 
called to mind that the king had five times already pardoned his 
brother, recently engaged in a new plot against him. 

Eichelieu's work survived him. On the very evening of the 3rd 

Declara- qJ December, Louis XIII. called to his council Cardinal Mazarin ; 
tion of the . 

King. and the next day he wrote to the parliaments and governors of 

provinces : " God having been pleased to take to Himself the Car- 
dinal de Richelieu, I have resolved to preserve and keep up all 
establishments ordained during his ministry, to follow out all pro- 
jects arranged with him for affairs abroad and at home, in such sort 
that there shall not be any change. I have continued in my councils 
the same persons as served me then, and I have called thereto 
Cardinal Mazarin, of whose capacity and devotion to my service I 
have had proof, and of whom I feel no less sure than if he had 
been born amongst my subjects." Scarcely had the most powerlul 



Literature. 359 

kings yielded up their last breath, when their wishes had been at 
once forgotten : Cardinal Richelieu still governed in his grave. 

The great statesman had been barely four months reposing in 
that chapel of the Sorbonrie which he had himself repaired for the 
purpose, and already King Louis XIII. was sinking into the tomb. 
The minister had died at fifty-seven, the king was not yet forty- 
two ; but his always languishing health seemed unable to bear the 
burden of affairs which had been but lately borne by Eichelieu A.D. 1643. 
alone. He died on Thursday, May the 14th, 1643. France owed ?^^!V^ 

, _r . „-rTr • ^^ ,• /^ t , t^ • , i • , LouisXIIl. 

to Louis Xlli. eighteen years 01 Cardinal Jxichelieus government ; (May 14). 
and that is a service which she can never forget. " The minister 
made his sovereign plaj^ the second part in the monarchy and the 
first in Europe," said Montesquieu : " he abased the king, but he 
exalted the reign." It is to the honour of Louis XIII. that he 
understood and accepted the position designed for him by Provi- 
dence in the government of his kingdom, and that he upheld with 
dogged fidelity a power which often galled him all the while that 
it was serving him. 

We must turn back for a moment and cast a glance at the intel- 
lectual condition which prevailed at the issue of the Eenaissanc© 
and the Reformation. 

For sixty years a momentous crisis had been exercising language State of 
and literature as well as society in France. They yearned to get literature, 
out of it. Robust intellectual culture had ceased to be the privi- 
lege of the erudite only ; it began to gain a footing on the common 
domain ; people no longer wrote in Latin, like Erasmus ; the 
Reformation and the Renaissance spoke French. In order to 
suffice for this change, the language was taking form ; everybody 
had lent a hand to the work ; Calvin with his Cliristian Institutes 
{Institution Chretienne) at the same time as Rabelais with his 
learned and buffbonish romance, Ramus with his Dialectics, and 
Bodin with his Republic, Henry Estienne with his essays in French 
philology, as well as Ronsard and his friends by their classical 
crusade. Simultaneously with the language there was being 
created a public, intelligent, inquiring and eager. Scarcely had 
the translation of Plutarch by Amyot appeared, when it at once 
became, as Montaigne says, " the breviary of women and of 
ignoramuses." 

As for Montaigne himself, an inquiring spectator, without per- Mon. 
aonal ambition, he had taken for his life's motto, '• What do I know ] taigae. 
(Que sais-jel) " Amidst the wars of religion he remained without 
political or religious passion. " I am disgusted by novelty, what- 
ever aspect it may assume, and with good reason," he would say, 



3^0 History of France. 

" for I have seen some very disastrous effects of it," Outside aa 
well as within himself, Montaigne studied mankind without regard 
to order and without premeditated plan. That fixity which he 
could not give to his irresolute and doubtful mind he stamped 
upon the tongue ; it came out in his Essays supple, free and bold ; 
he had made the first decisive step towards the formation of the 
language, pending the advent of Descartes and the great literature 
of France. 

Work of The sixteenth century began everything, attempted everything ; 

the SIX- -ji; accomplished and finished nothing ; its great men opened the 

lury. road of the future to France ; but they died without having 

brought their work well through, without foreseeing that it was 
going to be completed. The Reformation itself did not escape 
this misappreciation and discouragement of its age ; and nowhere 
do they crop out in a more striking manner than in Montaigne. 
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Rabelais a satirist and 
a cynic, is, nevertheless, no sceptic ; there is felt circulating through 
his book a glowing sap of confidence and hope ; fifty years later, 
Montaigne, on the contrary, expresses, in spite of his happy nature, 
in vivid, picturesque, exuberant language, only the lassitude of an 
antiquated age. All the writers of mark in the reign of Henry IV. 
bear the same imprint ; they all yearn to get free from the chaos of 
those ideas and sentiments which the sixteenth century left still 
bubbling up. In literature as well as in the State, one and the 
same need of discipline and unity, one universal thirst for order 
and peace was bringing together all the intellects and all the forces 
which were but lately clashing against and hampering one another ; 
in literature, as well as in the State, the impulse, everywhere great 
and effective, proceeded from the king, without pressure or effort ; 
" Make known to Monsieur de Geneve," said Henry IV. to one of 

St. Francis the friends of St. Francis de Sales, " that I desire of him a work 
^^* to serve as a manual for all persons of the court and the great 
world, without excepting kings and princes, to fit them for living 
Christianly each according to their condition. I want this manual 
to be accurate, judicious, and such as any one can make use of." 
St. Francis de Sales published, in 1608, the Introduction to a Devout 
Life, a delightful and charming manual of devotion, more stern 
and firm in spirit than in form, a true Christian regimen softened 
by the tact of a delicate and acute intellect, knowing the Avorld 
and its ways. " The book has surpassed my hope," said Henry IV. 
The style is as supple, the fancy as rich, as Montaigne's ; but 
scepticism has given place to Christianism ; St. Francis de Sales 
does not doubt, he believes ; ingenious and moderate withal, he 



Philosophy. 361 

escapes out of the controversies of the violent and the incertitudes 
of the sceptics. The step is firm, the march is onward towards 
the seventeenth century, towards the reign of order, rule and 
method. The vigorous language and the beautiful arrangement in. 
the style of the magistrates had already prepared the way for its 
advent. Descartes was the first master of it and its great 
exponent. 

Never was any mind more independent in voluntary submission 
to an inexorable logic. Rene Descartes, who was born at La Haye, Descartes, 
near Tours, in 1596, and died at Stockholm in 1650, escaped the 
influence of Kichelieu by the isolation to which he condemned 
himself as well as by the proud and somewhat uncouth indepen- 
dence of his character. His independence of thought did not tend 
to revolt ; in publishing his Discourse on Method he halted at the 
threshold of Christianism without laying his hand upon the sanc- 
tuary. Making a clean sweep of all he had learnt, and tearing 
himself free by a supreme effort from the whole tradition of 
humanity, he resolved never to accept anything as true until he 
recognised it to be clearly so, and not to comprise amongst his 
opinions anything but what represented itself so clearly and dis- 
tinctly to his mind that he could have no occasion to hold it in 
doubt."' In this absolute isolation of his mind, without past and 
without future, Descartes, first of all assured of his own personal His " Dis- 
existence by that famous axiom, " Cogito, ergo sum " (7 think, ^It^fj w° 
therefore I am), drew from it as a necessary consequence the fact 
of the separate existence of soul and of body ; passing on by a 
sort of internal revelation which he called innate ideas, he came 
to the pinnacle of his edifice, concluding for the existence of a 
God from the notion of the infinite impressed on the human soul. 
A laborious reconstruction of a primitive and simple truth which 
the philosopher could not, for a single moment, have banished from 
his mind all the while that he was labouring painfully to demon- 
strate it. 

By his philosophical method, powerful and logical, as well as 
by the clear, strong, and concise style he made use of to expound it, 
Descartes accomplished the transition from the sixteenth century 
to the seventeenth ; he was the first of the great prose-writers of 
that incomparable epoch, which laid for ever the foundations of the 
language. At the same moment the great CorneiUe was rendering 
poetry the same service. 

It had come out of the sixteenth century more disturbed and |°^*^^*. 
less formed than prose ; Eonsard and his friends had received ^^^ ^jjg 
it, from the hands of Marot, quite young, unsophisticated and Pleiad. 



362 



History of France. 



undecided ; thev attempted, as a first effort, to raise it to the 
level of the great classic models of which their minds were full. 
The attempt was bold, and the Pleiad did not pretend to consult 
the taste of the vulgar. There was something pregnant and 
brilliant about Eonsard in spite of exaggerations of style and faults 
of taste ; his disciples imitated and carried to an extreme his defects 
without possessing his talent ; the unruliness was such as to call 
for reform. Peace revived with Henry IV., and the court, hence- 
forth in accord with the nation, resumed that empire over taste, 
manners and ideas, which it was destined to exercise so long and 
so supremely under Louis XIV. Malherbe became the poet of the 
court, whose business it was to please it, to a'lopt for it that litera- 
ture which had but lately been reserved for the feasts of the 
learned. A complete revolution' in the opposite direction to that 
which Eonsard attempted appeared to have taken place, but the 
human mind never loses all the ground it has once w^on ; in the 
verses of Malherbe, often bearing the imprint of beauties borrowed 
from the ancients, the language preserved, iu consequence of the 
character given to it by Eonsard, a dignity, a richness of style, of 
which the times of Marot showed no conception, and it was falling, 
moreover, under the chastening influence of an elegant correctness. 
As passionate an admirer of Eichelieu as of Henry IV., naturally 
devoted to the service of the order established in the State as well 
as in poetry, Malherbe, under the regency of Mary de' Medici, 
favoured the taste which was beginning to show itself for intellec- 
tual things, for refined pleasures and elegant occupations. It was 
not around the queen that this honourable and agreeable society 
gathered ] it was at the Hotel Eambouillet, around Catherine de 
Vivonne, in the Eue St. Thomas du Louvre. Literature was there 
represented by Malherbe and Eacan, afterwards by Balzac and 
Voiture, Gombault and Chapelain, who constantly met there, in 
company Avith Princess de Conde and her daughter, subsequently 
duchess of Longueville, Mademoiselle du Vigean, Madame and 
Mdlle. d'Epernon, and the bishop of Lu9on himself, quite young 
as yet, but already famous. " All the wits were received at the 
Hotel Eambouillet, whatever their condition," says M. Cousin : 
"all that was asked of them was to have good manners ; but the 
aristocratic tone was established there without any effort, the 
majority of the guests at the house being very great lords, and the 
mistress being at one and the same time Eambouillet and Vivonne. 
The wits were courted and honoured, but they did not hold the 
dominion." 

The cardinal remained well-disj)osed towards Hotel Eamboiullet. 



The " Academie FrauQuise.^* 363 

Completely occupied in laying solidly the foundations of his power, 
in checkmating and punishing conspiracies at court, and in breaking 
down the party of the huguenots, he had no leisure just yet to 
thiiok of literature and the literary. He had, nevertheless, in 1626, 
begun removing the ruins of the Sorbonne, with a view of recon- 
structing the buildings on a new plan and at his own expense. At 
the same time he was helping Guy de la Brosse, the king's physician, 
to create the Botanic Gardens {Le Jardin des plantes), he was Eichelien s 
defending the independence of the College of France against the l^^^'^^^'y 
pretensions of the University of Paris, and he gave it for its Grand scientific 
Almoner his brother the archbishop of Lyons. He was preparing creations 
the foundation of the King's Press {Imprimerie royale), definitively 
created in 1640 ; and he gave the Academy or ^ King's College 
(^college royal) of his town of Eichelieu a regulation-code of studies 
which bears the imprint of his lofty and strong mind. He pre- 
scribed a deep study of the French tongue. 

Associations of the literary were not unknown in France ; 
Eonsard and his friends, at first under the name of the brigade, 
and then under that of the Pleiad, often met to read together 
their joint productions, and to discuss literary questions ; and the 
same thing was done, subsequently in Malherbe's rooms. " J^ow 
let us sjjeak at our ease," Balzac would say, when the sitting was 
over, "and without fear of committing solecisms." When Malherbe 
was dead, and Balzac had retired to his country-house on the 
borders of the Chareute, some friends, " men of letters and of 
merits very much above the average," says Pellisson in his Histoire ^^ 
de rAcadeiiiie Frangaise, " finding that nothing was more incon- demie 
venient in this great city than to go often and often to call upon Francaise'* 
one another without finding anybody at home, resolved to meet one 
day in the week at the house of one of them." Such were the 
commencements of the French Academy, which, even after the inter- 
vention and regulationising of Cardinal Eichelieu, still preserved 
something of that sweetness and that polished familiarity in their 
relations which caused the regrets of its earliest founders. [They 
were MM. Godeau, afterwards bishop of Grasse, Conrart and 
Gombault who were huguenots, Chapelain, Giry, Habert, Abbe de 
Cerisy, his brother, M. de Serizay and M. de Maleville.] In 
making of this little private gathering a great national institution, 
Cardinal Richelieu yielded to his natural yearning for government 
and dominion ; he protected literature as a minister and as an 
admirer ; the admirer's inclination was supported by the minister's 
influence. At the same time, and perhaps without being aware of 
it, he was giving French literature a centre of discipline and union 



364 History of France. 

whilst securing for the independence and dignity of writers a 
supporting-point which they had hitherto lacked. Whilst recom- 
pensing them by favours nearly always conferred in the name of 
the State, he was preparing for them afar off the means of with- 
drawing themselves from. that private dependence, the yoke of which 
the)'' nearly always had to bear. Set free at his death from the 
weight of their obligations to him, they became the servants of the 
State ; ere long the French Academy had no other protector but 
Its rules the king. Order and rule everywhere accompanied Cardinal 

^ . Richelieu ; the Academy drew up its statutes, chose a director, a 
organiza^ j ./ r ' ? 

tion. chancellor and a perpetual secretary : Conrart was the first to be 
called to that honour ; the number of Academicians was set down 
at forty. The letters patent for establishment of the French 
Academy had been sent to the parliament in 1635 ; they were not 
enregistered until 1637, at the express instance of the cardinal. 

Amongst the earliest members of the Academy the cardinal had 
placed his most habitual and most intimate literary servants, Bois- 
Robert, Desraarets, Colletet, all writers for the theatre, employed 
by Richelieu in his own dramatic attempts, Theatrical representa- 
tions were the only pleasure the minister enjoyed, in accord with 
the public of his day. He had everywhere encouraged this taste, 
supporting with marked favour Hardy and the Theatre Parisien. 
With his mind constantly exercised by the wants of the government, 
he soon sought in the theatre a means of acting upon the masses. 
He had already foreseen the power of the press ; he had laid hands 
on Doctor Renaudot's Gazette de France ; King Louis XIII. often 
wrote articles in it ; the manuscript exists in the ITational Library, 
with some corrections which appear to be Richelieu's. As for the 
theatre, the cardinal aspired to try his own hand at the work : 
The drama ^^^ literary labours were nearly all political pieces ; his tragedy of 
"Mirame." Mirame, to which he attached so much value, and which he had 
represented at such great expense for the opening of his theatre in. 
the Palais-Cardinal, is nothing but one continual allusion, often 
"bold even to insolence, to Buckingham's feelings towards Anne of 
Austria. 

Occupied as he was in governing the affairs of France and of 
Europe otherwise than in verse, the cardinal chose out collahora- 
teurs ; there were five of them, to whom he gave his ideas and the 
plan of his piece ; he entrusted to each the duty of writing an 
act, and " by this means finished a comedy in the course of a month," 
Peter says Pellisson. In conjunction with Colletet,Bois-Robert, Del'Etoile 
Corneille. and Rotrou, Peter Corneille worked at his Eminence's tragedies and 
comedies. He handled according to his fancy the act entrusted to 



Corneille and " Le Cid" 365 

him, with so much freedom that the cardinal was shocked, and said 
that he lacked, in his opinion, the gift of connectedness {I'esprit 
de suite). Corneille did not appeal from this judgment ; he quietly 
took the road to Eouen, leaving henceforth to his four work-fellows 
tht-'> glory of putting into form the ideas of the all-powerful minis- 
ter ; he worked alone, for his own hand, for the glory of France 
and of the human mind. 

Many attempts have heen made to fathom the causes of the 
cardinal's animosity to the Cid. It was a Spanish piece, and •»Le Cid." 
represented in a favourable light the traditional enemies of France 
and of Eichelieu ; it was all in honour of the duel, which the 
cardinal had prosecuted with such rigorous justice ; it depicted a 
king simple, patriarchal, genial in the exercise of his power, contrary 
to all the views cherished by the minister touching royal majesty ; 
all these reasons might have contributed to his wrath, but there 
was something more personal and petty in its bitterness. The 
triumph of the Cid seemed to the resentful spirit of a neglected 
and irritated patron a sort of insult. Therewith was mingled a 
certain shade of author's jealousy. Eichelieu saw in the fame of 
Corneille the success of a rebel. Egged on by base and malicious 
influences, he attempted to crush him, as he had crushed the House 
of Austria and the huguenots. 

The cabal of bad taste enlisted to a man in this new war. cabal 
Scudery was standard-bearer; astounded that "such fantastic against it. 
beauties should have seduced knowledge as well as ignorance." 
The contest was becoming fierce and bitter ; much was written for 
and against the Cid; the public remained faithful to it; the 
cardinal determined to submit it to the judgment of the Academy, 
thus exacting from that body an act of complaisance towards 
himself, as well as an act of independence and authority in the teeth 
of predominant opinion. At his instigation, Scudery wrote to the 
Academy to make them the judges in the dispute. The Sentiments 
de VAcademie at last saw the light in the month of December, 1637, 
and, as Chapelain had foreseen, they did not completely satisfy 
either the cardinal or Scudery, in spite of the thanks which the 
latter considered himself bound to express to that body, or 
Corneille, who testified bitter displeasure. Eichelieu did not come 
out of it victorious ; his anger however had ceased : the duchess of 
Aiguillon, his niece, accepted the dedication of the Cid ; when 
Horace appeared, in 1639, the dedicatory epistle addressed to the 
cardinal proved that Corneille read his works to him beforehand ; 
the cabal appeared for a while on the point of making head again : 
"Horace, condemned by the decemvirs, was acquitted by the 



366 



History of France. 



people," said Corneille. The same year China came to give the 
finishing touch to the reputation of the great poet : 

'' To the persecuted Cid the Cinna owed its birth." 

The great literary moA'^ement of the seventeenth century had 
"begun ; it had no longer any need of a protector ; it was destined 
to grow lip alone during twenty years, amidst troubles at home and 
wars abroad, to flourish all at once, with incomparable splendour, 
under the reign and around the throne of Louis XIV. Cardinal 
Richelieu, however, had the honour of protecting its birth ; he had 
taken personal pleasure in it ; he had comprehended its importance 
and beauty ; he had desired to serve it whilst taking the direction 
of it. Let us end, as we began, with the judgment of La Bruyere : 
"Compare yourselves, if you dare, with the great Eichelieu, you 
men devoted to fortune, you, who say that you know nothing, that 
you have read nothing, that you will read nothing. Learn that 
Cardinal Eichelieu did know, did read ; I say not that he had no 
estrangement from men of letters, but that he loved them, caressed 
them, favoured them, that he contrived privileges for them, that he 
appointed pensions for them, that he united them in a celebrated 
body, and that he made of them the French Academy." 

The Academy, the Sorbonne, the Botanic Gardens (Jardin des 
Plantes), the King's Press have endured ; the theatre has grown 
and been enriched by many master-pieces, the press has become 
the most dreaded of powers ; all the new forces that Eichelieu 
created or foresaw have become developed without him, frequently 
in opposition to him and to the work of his whole life ; his name 
has remained connected with the commencement of all these 
wonders, beneficial or disastrous, which he had grasped and 
presaged, in a future happily concealed from his ken. 

The declaration of Louis XIII. touching the Eegency had been 
entirely directed towards counteracting by anticipation the power 
entrusted to his wife and liis brother. The queen's regency and 
the duke of Orleans' lieutenant-generalship were in some sort 
subordinated to a council composed of the prince of Conde, Cardinal 
Mazarin, Chancellor Seguier, Superintendent Bouthillier, and 
Secretary of State Chavigny, "with a prohibition against intro- 
ducing any change therein, for any cause or on any occasion 
whatsoever." The queen and the duke of Orleans had signed and 
sworn the declariition. 

King Louis XIII. was not yet in his grave when his last wishes 
were violated ; before his death the queen had made terms with 
the ministers ; the course to be followed had been decided. On the 



Baftk of Rocroi. 367 

18th of May, 1€43, the queen, having brought back the little king 

to Paris, conducted him in great state to the parliament of Paris 

to hold his bed of justice there, and on the evening of the same day 

the queen regent, having sole charge of the administration of affairs, 

and modifying the council at her pleasure, announced to the 

astounded court that she should retain by her Cardinal Mazarin. 

Continuing to humour all parties, and displaying foresight and 

prudence, the new minister was even now master. Louis XIII., 

without any personal liking, had been faithful to Richelieu to the 

death ; with different feelings, Anne of Austria was to testify the 

same constancy towards Mazarin. 

A stroke of fortune came at the very first to strengthen the War in 

regent's position. Since the death of Cardinal Eichelieu, the ^^?, "^^ 
c . Battle of 

Spaniards, but recently overwhelmed at the close of 1642, had Rocroi 

recovered courage and boldness ; new counsels prevailed at the (^^^ ^^)' 

court of Philip IV. who had dismissed Olivarez ; the House of 

Austria vigorously resumed the offensive ; at the moment of 

Louis XIII. 's death, Don Francisco de Mello, governor of the Low 

Countries, had JT:^^st invaded French territory by way of the Ardennes, 

and laid siege to Eocroi, on the 12th of May. The French army 

commanded by the young duke of Enghien, the prince of Conde's 

son, scarcely twenty-two years old, gained a signal victory over the 

Spanish infantry till then deemed invincible (1643). 

JiTegotiations for a general peace, the preliminaries whereof had Negotia- 

been signed by King Louis XIIL in 1641, had been soino: on since *^°-^^ ^"^ 

00 T)eac6 ar6 

1644 at Miinster and at Osnabriick, without having produced any begun. 

result ; the duke of Enghien, who became prince of Conde in 1646, 
was keeping up the war in Flanders and Germany, with the co- 
operation of Viscount Turenne, younger brother of the duke of 
Bouillon, and, since Rocroi, a marshal of France. The capture of 
Thionville and of Dunkerque, the victories of Friburg and Nord- 
lingen, the skilful opening effected in Germany as far as Augsburg 
by the French and the Swedes, had raised so high the reputation 
of the two generals, that the prince of Conde, who was haughty 
and ambitious, began to cause great umbrage to Mazarin. Fear of 
having him unoccupied deterred the cardinal from peace, and made 
all the harder the conditions he presumed to impose upon the 
Spaniards. Meanwhile the United Provinces, weary of a war 
which fettered their commerce, and skilfully courted by their old 
masters, had just concluded a private treaty with Spain ; the 
emperor was trying, but to no purpose, to detach the Swedes 
likewise from the French alliance, when the victory of Lens, gained 
on the 20th of August, 1648, over Archduke Leopold and General 



368 



History of France. 



Beck, came to throw into the balance the weight of a success as 
splendid as it was unexpected ; one more campaign, and Turenne 
might be threatening Vienna whilst Conde entered Brussels ; the 
emperor saw there was no help for it and bent his head. The 
House of Austria split in two ; Spain still refused to treat with 
France, but the whole of Germany clamoured for peace ; the con- 
ditions of it were at last drawn up at Miinster by MM. Servien and 
de Lionne ; M. d'Avaux, the most able diplomatist that Erance 
possessed, had been recalled to Paris at the beginning of the year. 
On the 24th of October, 1648, after four years of negotiation, France 
at last had secured to her Alsace and the three bishoprics of Metz, 
Toul, and Verdun ; Sweden gained Western Pomerania, including 
Stettin, the isle of Pugen, the three mouths of the Oder and the 
bishoprics of Bremen and Werden, thus becoming a German power : 
as for Germany, she had won liberty of conscience and political 
liberty ; the rights of the Lutheran or reformed Protestants were 
equalized with those of Catholics ; henceforth the consent of a free 
assembly of all the Estates of the empire was necessary to make 
laws, raise soldiers, impose taxes, and decide pe^ce or war. The 
peace of Westphalia put an end at one and the same time to 
the Thirty Years' War and to the supremacy of the House of 
Austria in Germany. 

So much glory and so many military or diplomatic successes 
cost dear ; France was crushed by imposts, and the finances were 
discovered to be in utter disorder ; the superintendent, D'Emery, 
an able and experienced mau, was so justly discredited that his 
measures were, as a foregone conclusion, unpopular ; an edict laying 
octroi or tariff on the entry of provisions into the city of Paris 
irritated the burgesses, and parliament refused to enregister it. 
For some time past the parliament, which had been kept down by 
the iron hand of Eichelien, had perceived that it had to do with 
nothing more than an able man and not a master ; it began to hold 
up its head again ; a union was proposed between the four sovereign 
courts of Paris, to wit, the parliament, the grand council, the 
chamber of exchequer, and the court of aids or indirect taxes ; the 
queen quashed the deed of union; the magistrates set her at 
naught ; the queen yielded, authorizing the delegates to deliberate 
in the chamber of St. Louis at the Palace of Justice ; the pretensions 
of the parliament were exorbitant, and aimed at nothing short of 
resuming, in the affairs of the State, the position from which 
Richelieu had deposed it ; the concessions which Cardinal Mazarin 
with difficulty wrung from the Queen augmented the parliament's 
demands. Anne of Austria was beginning to lose patience, when 



The Fronde. 369 

the news of the victory of Lens restored courage to the court. 

"Parliament will be very sorry," said the little king, on hearing of 

the prince of Conde's success. The grave assemblage, on the 26th 

of August, was issuing from I^otre Dame, where a le Deum had ^rjegt of* 

just been sung, when Councillor Broussel and President Blancmesnil Broussel 

were arrested in their houses and taken, the one to St. Germain and ^ -Blanc 

' mesnil 

the other to A^ncennes. (Aug. 26). 

It was a mistake on the part of Anne of Austria and Cardinal 
Mazarin not to have considered the different condition of tlie 
public mind. A suppressed excitement had for some months been 
hatching in Paris and in the provinces. " The parliament growled 
over the tariff-edict," says Cardinal de Eetz; "and no sooner had 
it muttered than everybody awoke. People went groping as it were 
after the laws ; they were no longer to be found. Under the 
influence of this agitation, the people entered the sanctuary and 
lifted the veil that ought always to conceal whatever can be 
said about the right of peoples and that of kings which never 
accord so well as in silence." The arrest of Broussel, an old man <<The 
in high esteem, very keen in his opposition to the court, was like Fronde." 
fire to flax. 

Thousands of persons rushed to the Palais-Eoyal, where the 
court then resided, shouting out " Liberie et Broussel!" Barricades, 
were erected in the principal streets; the authority of the chan- 
cellor Seguier was set at nought, and the president of the parliament 
himself, Mathieu Mole, saw himself obliged to comply with the 
wishes of the people. They forced him to go to the queen at the 
head of the assembly, and under penalty of death, to bring back 
either Broussel or the cardinal. He succeeded in obtaining the 
liberty of the captives, and the queen, frightened out of her ob- 
stinacy, hastened to confirm the resolutions of the Chamhre, de 
iSaint Louis hj a decree dated October 24th, 1648 (Ordonnance de 
Saint Germain). 

The court, however, had yielded only with the firm resolution 
of retracting its concession as soon as a fit opportunity should 
occur. The king was removed from Paris, and, supported by The court 
Conde, the queen-dowager engaged against the parliament the war p^ris. 
to which the name of La Fronde has been given by way of contempt ; 
the rebellion of the parliamentarians being compared to that of 
unruly children who would persist in fighting with slings (frondes) 
notwithstanding the prohibition of the police. The principal 
leaders of the frondeurs were Conti, brother of Conde, his brother- 
in-law the duke de Longueville, the dukes de Bouillon and do 
La Eochefoucauld, Turenne, Paul de Gondi, coadjutor of the arch- 

B B 



370 



History of France. 



Epigrams 
an^ lam- 
poons. 



bishop of Paris and afterwards Cardinal de Eetz, and lastly the 
duke de Beaufort- Vendome, grandson of Henry IV. 

The chief results of this war, at least in its commencement, were 
songs, epigrams, lampoons, and now and then a few insignificant 
skirmislies. The twenty councillors of Eichelieu's creation, who 
supplied 15,000 livres towards the expenses of the war in order to 
ingratiate themselves with their colleagues, were nick-named les 
quinze-vingts ; each house having a carriage-entrance was obliged to 
fit out a mounted soldier, hence the sobriquet cavalerie des portes- 
cocheres given to the body of troops thus raised ; Gondi, who was 
archbishop of Corinth in loartibus, had been called " the little Cati- 
line," and the dagger which he carried habitually in his pocket was 
designated as " our archbishop's breviary " ; he raised at his own 
expense " the regiment of Corinth," and this regiment having been 
beaten in an ergagement with the royal troops, the result was 
called " the first to the Corinthians." Conti was deformed, they 
said that he was a dwarf ; Beaufort had obtained much popularity, 
they called him le roi des halles. As for serious battles, there were 
none. Conde had only to present himself with a handfull of sol- 
diers ; he defeated at Charenton the armies of the Parisians who 
had marched out against him covered with ribbons and feathers. 
An arrangement was made at Euel (April 1649), but the court 
returned to Paris only four months afterwards. 

The easy success obtained by Conde, his position as general of 
the royal army dazzled him. He made himself chief of a new 
party, who, under the name of petits-maitres, were more insup- 
portable still than the others. He affected the most supreme con- 
tempt for Mazarin. One day, writing to him, he directed the letter, 
"aZZ' illustrissimo Signor FacxMno I" '^ Adieu, Mars I" said he to 
him on another occasion, when taking leave of him. It was high 
time that the minister should vindicate his own dignity. Conde, 
Conti and Longueville, arrested at the Louvre, were taken first to 
Vincennes, and then to the Havre. 
Contest The State stroke had succeeded ; Mazarin's skill and prudence 

M-szaH^ once more checkmated all the intrigues concocted against him. 
and Conde. "When the news was told to Chavigny, in spite of all his reasons 
for bearing malice against the cardinal, who had driven him from 
the council and kept him for some time in prison, he exclaimed : 
" That is a great misfortune for the prince and his friends ; but 
the truth must be told : the cardinal has done quite right ; without 
it he would have been ruined." The contest was begun between 
Mazarin and the great Conde, and it was not with the prince that 
the victory was to remain. 



Masarin leaves France. 37 1 

Already hostilities were commencing ; Mazarin had done every- 
thing for the Frondeurs who remained faithful to him, hut the 
house of Conde was rallying all its partisans ; the dukes of 
Eouillon and La Rochefoucauld had thrown themselves into Bor- 
deaux, which was in revolt against the royal authority, represented 
hy the duke of Epernon. The princess of Conde and her young 
son left (^hantilly to join them ; Madame de Longueville occupied 
Stenay, a strong place belonging to the prince of Conde : she had 
there found Turenne ; on the other hand, the queen had just been 
through JSTormandy ; all the towns had opened their gates to her ; TheFronde 

it was iust the same in Burgundy ; the princess of Conde's able "» '•he 

provinces 
agent, Lenet, could not obtain a declaration from the parliament of 

Dijon in her favour. Bordeaux was the focus of the insurrection ; 

the people, passionately devoted to "the dukes," as the saying was, 

were forcing the hand of the parliament ; riots were frequent in 

the town ; the little king, with the queen and the cardinal, marched 

ill person upon Bordeaux ; one of the faubourgs was attacked, the 

dukes negotiated and obtained a general amnesty, but no mention 

was made of the princes' release. The parliament of Paris took 

the matter up, and on the 30th of January, Anne of Austria sent 

word to the premier president that she would consent to grant the 

release of the princes, " provided that the armaments of Stenay and 

of M. de Turenne might be discontinued." 

The cardinal saw that he was beaten ; he made up his mind, A.D. 165 
and, anticipating the queen's officers, he hurried to Le Havre to igave"" 
release the prisoners himself; he entered the castle alone, the France, 
governor having refused entrance to the guards who attended him. 
" The prince told me," says Mdlle. de Montpensier, " that, when 
they were dining together, Cardinal Mazarin was not so much in 
the humour to laugh as he himself was, and that he was very much 
embarrassed. Liberty to be gone had more charms for the prince 
than the cardinal's company. He said that he felt marvellous 
delight at finding himself outside Le Havre, with his sword at his 
side ; and he might well be pleased to wear it, he is a pretty good 
hand at using it. As he went out he turned to the cardinal and 
said: 'Farewell, Cardinal Mazarin,' wlio kissed 'the tip of sleeve' 
to him." 

The cardinal had slowly taken the road to exile, summoning to 
him his nieces, Mdlles. Mancini and Martinozzi, whom he had, 
a short time since, sent for to court ; he went from Normandy 
into Picardy, made some stay at Doullens, and, impelled by his 
enemies* hatred, he finally crossed the frontier on the 12th of 
March. The parliament had just issaed orders for his arrest in 

B B 2 



17^ 



History of France. 



Battle of 
the Porte 
St.An- 
toine. 



A.T). 1660. 
Beath of 

the duke 
of Orleans. 



any part of France. On the 6tli of April, lie fixed his quarters at 
Briihl, a little town belonging to the electorate of Cologne, in the 
same territory which had but lately sheltered the last days of Mary 
de' Medici, 

The Frondeurs, old and new, had gained the day ; but even now 
there was disorder in their camp. Conde had returned to the 
court "like a raging lion, seeking to devour everybody, and, in 
revenge for his imprisonment, to set fire to the four corners of the 
realm " \Memoires de Montglat\ He retired southwards and pre- 
pared for war. He was opposed, in the first instance, by marshal 
d'Hocquincourl, who was defeated at Bleneau, on the banks of the 
Loire, and afterwards by Turenne, who, having come to terms with 
the court, gained at Gien a battle over the rebels. Both com- 
manders then marched upon Paris, and a general engagement took 
place at the Porte Saint Antoine, where the Frondeurs remained 
victorious, thanks to the audacity of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, 
daughter of Gaston, duke d'Orleans. From the top of the Bas- 
tille this princess fired the first cannon upon the royal army, and, as 
Mazarin said, that fatal shot killed her hushand, alluding to the 
ambition she entertained of marrying Louis XIV. Conde marched 
into the metropolis, and after attempting vainly to maintain him- 
self by violence, he took the command of the Spanish army, thus 
disgracing his character by joining the enemies of his country. The 
court then returned to Paris, punished the rebels, and in October, 
1652, the Fronde may be said to have finished. 

It was now Mazarin's turn to triumph ; his progress back to Paris 
was almost regal. The duke of Orleans retired before long to his 
castle at Blois, where he died in 1660, deserted, towards the end of 
his life, by all the friends he had successively abandoned and 
betrayed. " He had, with the exception of courage, all that was 
necessary to make an honourable man," says Cardinal de Petz, "but 
weakness was predominant in his heart through fear, and in his 
mind through irresolution; it disfigured the whole course of his 
life. He engaged in everything because he had not strength to 
resist those who drew him on, and he always came out disgrace- 
fully, because he had not the courage to support them." He was 
a prey to fear, fear of his friends as well as of his enemies. The 
Fronde, as we last said, was all over, that of the gentry of the long 
robe as well as that of the gentry of the sword. The parliament 
of Paris was once more falling in the State to the rank which had 
been assigned to it by Richelieu, and from which it had wanted 
to emerge by a supreme effort. 

From 1653 to 1657, Turenne, seconded by Marshal La Ferte 



Negotiations with Spain. 373 

and sometimes by Cardinal Mazarin in person, constantly kept the 
Spaniards and the prince of Conde in check, recovering the places 
but lately taken from France, and relieving the besieged towns ; 
without ever engaging m pitched battles, he almost always had the 
advantage. At last the victory he gained at the Downs was pro- 
ductive of the greatest results ; Dunkerque surrendered imme- 
diately, and was ceded to England conformably to an agreement 
made between Mazarin and Cromwell. For a long time past the 
object of the cardinal's labours had been to terminate the war by 
an alliance with Spain. The Infanta, Maria Theresa, was no e^^ ^f ^^^ 
longer heiress to the crown, for King Philip at last had a son ; war with 
Spain was exhausted by long-continued efforts, and dismayed by ®P^^"- 
the checks received in the campaign of 1658 ; the alliance of the 
Ehine, recently concluded at Frankfurt between the two leagues, 
catholic and protestant, confirmed immutably the advantages which 
the treaty of Westphalia had secured to France. The electors had 
just raised to the head of the empire young Leopold I., on the 
death of his father Ferdinand III., and they proposed their media- 
tion between France and Spain. Whilst King Philip IV. was still 
hesitating, Mazarin took a step in another direction ; the king set 
out for Lyons, accompanied by his mother and his minister, to go 
and see Princess Margaret of Savoy, who had been proposed to 
him a long time ago as his wife. He was pleased with her, and 
negotiations were already pretty far advanced, to the great dis- 
pleasure of the queen-mother, when the cardinal, on the 29th of 
!N^ovember, 1659, in the evening, entered Anne of Austria's room. 
" He .found her pensive and melancholy, but he was all smiles. 
' Good news, madame,' said he. ' Ah ! ' cried the queen, ' is it to 
be peace % ' ' More than that, madame ; I bring your Majesty both 
peace and the Infanta.' " The Spaniards had become uneasy ; Louis XIV. 
and Don Antonio de Pimental had arrived at Lyons at the same marries 
time with the court of Savoy, bearing a letter from Philip IV. for fanta. 
the queen his sister. The duchess of Savoy had to depart and 
take her daughter with her, disappointed of her hopes ; . all the 
consolation she obtained was a written promise that the king 
would marry Princess Margaret, if the marriage with the Infanta 
were not accomplished within a year. 

The year had not yet rolled away, and the duchess of Savoy 
had already lost every atom of iQusion. Since the 13th of August, 
Cardinal Mazarin had been officially negotiating with Don Louis de 
Haro representing Philip IV. The ministers had held a meeting 
in the middle of the Bidassoa, on the Island of Pheasants, where 
a pavilion had been erected on the boundary-line between the two 



374 History of France. 

-aZ^J^Ql States. On the 7th of ITovemher, the peace of the Pyreneas 
the Pyre- was signed at last ; it pnt an end to a war which had continued 
nees. £qj. twenty-three years, often internecine, always burdensome, and 

which had ruined the finances of the two countries. France was 
the gainer of Artois and Eoussillon, and of several places in Flan- 
ders, Hainault and Luxembourg ; and the peace of Westphalia 
was recognized by Spain, to whom France restored all that she held 
in Catalonia and Franche-Comte. Philip IV. had refused to 
include Portugal in the treaty. The Infanta received as dowry 
500,000 gold crowns, and renounced all her rights to the throne of 
Spain ; the prince of Conde was taken back to favoui by the king, 
and declared that he would fain redeem with his blood all the 
hostilities he had committed in and out of France. The king 
restored him to all his honours and dignities, gave him the govern- 
ment of Burgundy, and bestowed on his son, the duke of Enghien, 
the office of Grand Master of France. The honour of the king ot 
Spain was saved, he did not abandon his allies, and he made a 
great match for his daughter. But the eyes of Europe were not 
blinded ; it was France that triumphed, the policy of Cardinal 
Richelieu and of Cardinal Mazarin was everywhere successful. The 
work of Henry IV. was completed, the House of Austria was humi- 
liated and vanquished in both its branches ; the man who had con- 
cluded the peace of Westphalia and the peace of the Pyrenees had 
a right to say, " I am more French in heart than in speech." 
Like Cardinal Eichelieu, Mazarin succumbed at the very pin- 
A.D. 1661. nacle of his glory and power; he died of gout in the stomach, 
MTzlrin ^^I'ch 9, 1661. 

(Marcli9). Louis XIV. was about to reign with a splendour and puissance 
without precedent ; his subjects were submissive and Europe at 
peace ; he was reaping the fruits of the labours of his grand- 
father Henry IV., of Cardinal Eichelieu and of Cardinal Mazarin. 
Whilst continuing the work of Henry IV., Eichelieu had rendered 
possible the government of Mazarin ; he had set the kingly 
authority on foundations so strong that the princes of the blood 
themselves could not shake it. Mazarin had destroyed party and 
secured to France a glorious peace. Great minister had succeeded 
great king and able man great minister ; Italian prudence, dex- 
terity and finesse had replaced the indomitable will, the incompar- 
able judgment and the grandeur of view of the French priest and 
nobleman. Eichelieu and Mazarin had accc mplished their patriotic 
"work : the King's turn had come. 




CHAPTEE XI. 

LOUIS XIV. — HIS FOREIGN POLICY, SUCCESSES AND EETERSES. 

Mazarin knew thoroughly the king whose hirth he had seen. " He Louis XIV. 

has in him the making of four kings and one honest man " he summons 

° ^ ' hs 

used to say. Scarcely was the minister dead, when Louis XIV. council. 

sent to summon his council : Chancellor Seguier, Superintendent 

Fouquet and Secretaries of State Le Tellier, de Lionne, Brienne, 

Duplessis-Guenegaud, and La Vrilliere. Then, addressing the 

chancellor : " Sir," said he, " I have had you assembled together 

with my ministers and my Secretaries of State to tell you that until 

now I have been well pleased to leave my affairs to be governed by 

the late cardinal : it is time that I should govern them myself ; you 

will aid me with your counsels when I ask for them. Beyond the 

general business of the seal, in which I do not intend to make any 

alteration, I beg and command you, Mr. Chancellor, to put the 

seal of authority to nothing without my orders, and without having 

spoken to me thereof, unless a Secretary of State shall bring them 

to you on my behalf And for you, gentlemen," addressing Declares 

the Secretaries of State, " I warn you not to sign anything, even tions. 

a safety-warrant or passport, without my command, to report every 

day to me personally, and to favour nobody in your monthly rolls. 

Mr. Superintendent, I have explained to you my intentions ; I beg 

that you will employ the services of M. Colbert, whom the late 

cardinal recommended to me." The king's councillors were men 

of experience ; and they all recognized the master's tone. It was 



3/6 History of France. 

Louis XIV.'s misfortune to lie king for seventy-two years, and to 
reign fifty-six years as sovereign master. 

At the age of twenty-two no more than during the rest of his life 
was Louis XIV. disposed to sacrifice husiness to pleasure, but he 
did not sacrifice pleasure to husiness. It was on a taste so natural 
to a young prince, for the first time free to do as he pleased, that 
Superintendent Fouquet counted to increase his influence and pro- 
hahly his power with the king. Fouquet, who was horn in 1615, 
and had been superintendent of finance in conjunction with Servien 
since 1655, had been in sole possession of that office since the death 
of his colleague in 1659. He had faithfully served Cardinal 
Mazarin through the troubles of the Fronde. The latter had kept 
him in power in spite of numerous accusations of malversation and 
extravagance. 

At the time we are now speaking of, the tide had not yet set in 
against the surintendant ; but clouds were beginning to gather on 
the horizon, and it became evident that a tremendous catastrophe 
was at hand. Tlie magnificent fete given to the king at Yaux by 
Fouquet was the immediate occasion of his disgrace. A few weeks 
after (September 1661) he was arrested, sent to the Bastille and 
tried on a double charge of dilapidations and of a plot formed 
against the safety of the State. The first ground of accusation was 
too true ; the second has never been proved. After a trial which 
lasted three years, nine judges voted for capital punishment and 
thirteen for banishment. The king passed a sentence of prison for 
life. Fouquet was taken to Pignerol, and all his family removed 
from Paris. He died piously in his prison, in 1680, a year before 
his venerable mother Marie Maupeou, who was so deeply concerned 
about her son's soul at the very pinnacle of greatness that she threw 
herself upon her knees on hearing of his arrest and exclaimed, " I 
thank Thee, God ; I have always prayed for his salvation, and 
here is the way to it ! " 

Master as he was over the maintenance of peace in Europe after 
so many and such long periods of hostility, young Louis XIV. was 
only waiting for an opportunity of recommencing war. God had 
vouchsafed him incomparable instruments for the accomplishment 
of his designs. "Whilst Colbert was replenishing the exchequer, all 
the while diminishing the imposts, a younger man than the king 
himself, the marquis of Louvois, son of Michael Le Tellier, admitted 
to the council at twenty years of age, was eagerly preparing the 
way for those wars which were nearly always successful so long 
as he lived, however insufficient were the reasons for them, how- 
ever unjust was their aim. 




LOUIS XIV. 



JVar with Spain. 377 

Foreign affairs were in no worse hands than the administration Colbert— 

of finance and of war. M. de Lionne was an able diplomatist, J'^^^'^ois— 

, Lionne. 

broken in for a long time past to important affairs, shrewd and sen- 
sible, more celebrated amongst his contemporaries than in history, 
always falling into the second rank, behind Mazarin or Louis XIV., 
*' who have appropriated his fame," says M. Mignet. The negotia- 
tions conducted by M. de Lionne were of a delicate nature. Louis 
XIV. had never renounced the rights of the queen to the succession 
in Spain ; King Philip IV. had not paid his daughter's dowry, he 
said ; the Fi'ench ambassador at Madrid, the archbishop of Embrun, 
was secretly negotiating to obtain a revocation of Maria Theresa's 
renunciation, or at the very least a recognition of the right of devo- 
lution over the catholic Low Countries. This strange custom of 
Hainault secured to the children of the first marriage succession 
to the paternal property to the exclusion of the offspring of the 
second marriage. Louis XIV. claimed the application of it to the 
advantage of the queen his wife, daughter of Elizabeth of France. 

In this view and with these prospects, he needed the alliance 
of the Hollanders, and had remained faithful to the policy of 
Henry IV. and Eichelieu when Philip IV. died on the 17th of 
September, 1665. Almost at the same time the dissension between 
England and Holland, after a period of tacit hostility, broke out 
into action. The United Provinces claimed the aid of France. 
Louis XIV. took the field in the month of May, 1667. The Campaign 
Spaniards were unprepared : Armentieres, Charleroi, Douai and 
Tournay had but insufficient garrisons, and they fell almost with- 
out striking a blow. Audenarde was taken in two days ; and 
the king laid siege to Lille. Vauban, already celebrated as an 
engineer, traced out the lines of circumvallation ; the burgesses 
forced the garrison to capitulate ; and Louis XIV. entered the town 
on the 27th of August, after ten days' open trenches. This first 
campaign had been nothing but playing at war, almost entirely 
without danger or bloodshed ; it had, nevertheless, been sufficient 
to alarm Europe. Scarcely had peace been concluded at Breda, 
Avhen, on the 23rd of January, 1668, the celebrated treaty of the 
Triple Alliance Avas signed at the Hague between England, Holland 
and Sweden. The three powers demanded of the king of France 
that he should grant the Low Countries a truce up to the month of 
May, in order to give time for treating with Spain and obtaining 
from her, as France demanded, the definitive cession of the con- 
quered places or Franche-Comte in exchange, At bottom, the A.,D. 1668. 
Triple Alliance was resolved to protect helpless Spain against t^e Triple- 
France ; a secret article bound the three allies to take up arms to Alliance. 



3/3 



History of France. 



Franche- 
Comte in 
vaded. 



Trfaty of 

Aix-la- 

Chapelle. 



restrain Louis XIV., and to bring him. back, if possible to the peace 
of the Pyrenees. At the same moment, Portugal was making peace 
with Spain, who recognized her independence. 

The king refused the long armistice demanded of him : " I will 
grant it up to the 31st of March," he had said, " being unwilling to 
miss the first opportunity of taking the field " The marquis of 
Castel-Ptodrigo made merry over this proposal : " I am content," 
said he, " with the suspension of arms that winter imposes upon 
the king of France." The governor of the Low Countries made a 
mistake : in the midst of winter, after having concentrated from all 
parts of France 90,000 men at Dijon, the king threw himself upon 
the Spanish possessions in Franche-Comte, carried Besan^on in two 
days. Dole in four, and the whole province in three weeks. Some 
one said, alluding to the rapidity of this campaign : " Autant eut 
valu envoyer des laquais pour en prendre possession." Louis XIV. 
satisfied with the brilliant results of his expedition and not wishing 
to compromise it, signed the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (May 2nd). 
According to the terms of that agreement, Spain abandoned to France 
all her conquests in the ISTorth, together with the towns of Bergues 
and Furnes on the sea-coast ; France restored Franche-Comte, but 
after having destroyed the fortifications which protected it, and 
reduced it to a defenceless state. By so doing, Louis XIV. was fur- 
ther enabled to gain the time he required for the preparation of the 
campaign which he meditated against Holland. 

He began by levying exorbitant duties on the tonnage of all ships 
coming from HoUand and by subjecting to a treble duty French 
goods imparted into that country. In the meanwhile Sweden had 
joined the side of France ; through the mediation of Henrietta of 
England, duchess of Orleans, and sister of Charles II., this monarch 
had taken the same resolution ; and finally the league was 
strengthened by the accession of the emperor and of the princes of 
the confederation of the Ehine (1672). 

At length, when everything was ready, Louis XIV., at the head of 
100,000 men, crossed the Ehine without obstacle, marching 
straight into the very heart of Holland. Eheinberg, Wesel, 
Burick, and Orsoy, attacked at once, did not hold out four days. 
The French On the 12th of June the king and the prince of Conde appeared 
cross the unexpectedly on the right bank of the intermediary branch of the 
Ehine, between the Wahal and the Yssel. The Hollanders were 
expecting the enemy at the ford of the Yssel, being more easy to 
pass \ they were taken by surprise ; the king's cuirassier regiment 
dashed into the river and crossed it partly by fording and partly 
by swimming; the resistance was brief; meanwhile the duke of 



MiLvder of' the brothers Van Witt. 379 

Longueville was killed and the prince of Conde was wounded for tlie 
first time in his life. " I was present at the passage, which was 
bold, vigorous, full of brilliancy and glorious for the nation," writes 
Louis XIV. Arnheim and Deventer had just surrendered to 
Turenne and Luxembourg ; Duisbourg resisted the king for a few 
days ; Monsieur was besieging Zutphen. John van Witt was for 
evacuating the Hague and removing to Amsterdam the centre of 
government and resistance ; the prince of Orange had just abandoned 
the province of Utrecht, which was immediately occupied by the utrecht 
French ; the defensive efforts were concentrated upon the province occupied 
of Holland ; already l^aarden, three leagues from Amsterdam, was J \ 
in the king's hands ; " We learn the surrender of towns before we 
have heard of their investment," wrote Van Witt. A deputation 
from the States was sent on the 22nd of June to the king's head- 
quarters to demand peace. Louis XIV. had just entered Utrecht, 
which, finding itself abandoned, opened its gates to him. On the 
same day, John van Witt received in a street of the Hague four 
stabs with a dagger from the hand of an assassin, whilst the city of 
Amsterdam, but lately resolved to surrender and prepared to send 
its magistrates as delegates to Louis XIV., suddenly decided upon 
resistance to the bitter end. 

The king of France was as yet ignorant what can be done 
amongst a proud people by patriotism driven to despair; the 
States-general offered him Maestricht, the places on the Rhine, 
Brabant and Dutch Flanders, with a war-indemnity of ten millions ; 
it was an open door to the Spanish Low Countries, which became 
a patch enclosed by French possessions ; but the king wanted to 
annihilate the Hollanders ; he demanded southern Gueldres, the 
island of Bonmel, twenty-four millions, the restoration of Catholic 
\vorship, and, every year, an embassy commissioned to thank the 
king for having a second time given peace to the United Provinces. 
This was rather too much ; and, whilst the deputies were nego- 
tiating with heavy hearts, the people of Holland had risen in wrath. 
The States-general decided to " reject the hard and intolerable con- 
ditions proposed by their lordships the kings of France and Great 
Britain, and to defend this State and its inhabitants with all their 
might." The province of Holland in its entirety followed the 
example of Amsterdam ; the dikes were everywhere broken down, 
at the same time that tlie troops of the electors of Brandenburg and 
Saxony were advancing to the aid of the United Provinces, and 
that the emperor was signing with those two princes a defensive j([„jfler 
alliance for the maintenance of the treaties of Westphalia, the of the 
Pyrenees and Aix-la-Chapelle. The murder of the brothers Van y^^^^jj 



SSo 



History of France. 



Witt was an act wanton cruelty and of brutal ingratitude ; the 
instinct of the people of Hollaiid, however, saw clearly into the 
situation. John van Witt would have failed in the struggle against 
France ; Wdliam of Orange, prince, politician and soldier, saved 
his country and Europe from the yoke of Louis XIV. 

Thus was being undone, link by link, the chain of alliances 
which Louis XIV. had but lately twisted round Holland ; France, 
in her turn, was finding herself alone, with all Europe agaiust her, 
scared, and consequently active and resolute ; not one of the belli- 
gerents desired peace ; the Hollanders had just settled the heredity 
of the stadtholderate in the House of Orange. Louis XIV. saw 
the danger. " So many enemies," says he in his Memoires, 
" obliged me to take care of myself, and think what I must do to 
maintain the reputation of my arms, the advantage of my dominions 
and my personal glory." It was in Franche-Comte that Louis 
XIV. went to seek these advantages. The whole province was 
reduced to submission in the month of June, 1674. Turenne had 
kept the Rhine against the Imperialists ; the marshal alone escaped 
the tyranny of the king and Louvois, and presumed to conduct the 
campaign in his own way. Conde had gained on the 11th of 
August the bloody victory of Seneffe over the prince of Orange 
and the allied generals. Advantages remained balanced in 
Flanders ; the result of the campaign depended on Turenne, who 
commanded on the Ehine. On the 16th of June, he engaged in 
battle at Sinzheim with the duke of Lorraine, who was coming up 
with the advance-guard. " I never saw a more obstinate fight," 
said Turenne : " those old regiments of the emperor's did mighty 
well." He subsequently entered the Palatinate, quartering, his 
troops upon it, whilst the superintendents sent by Louvois were 
burning and plundering the country, crushed as it was under war- 
contributions. The king and Louvois were disquieted by the 
movement of the enemy's troops, and wanted to get Turenne back 
into Lorraine. On the 20th of September, . the burgesses of the 
free city of Strasburg delivered up the bridge over the Ehine to the 
Imperialists who were in the heart of Alsace. The victory of 
Ensheim, the fights of Miilhausen and Turckheim, sufficed to drive 
them back ; but it was only on the 22nd of January, 1575, that 
Turenne was at last enabled to leave Alsace reconquered. 

The coalition was proceeding slowly ; the prince of Orange was 
ill ; the king made himself master of the citadel of Liege and some 
small places. Limburg surrendered to the prince of Conde, with- 
out the allies having been able to relieve it. In June 1675, 
Turenne returned to his army ; he invaded once more the Palatinate, 



Marriage of the Prince of Orange. %^\ 

and was opposed by MontecucuUi, a general who, ten years "before, 
had defeated the Turks at the battle of Saint-Golhard, and who 
was considered a consummate tactician. For six M'^eeks the two 
commanders observed and followed one another, and their reputation 
was much increased by the proof they thus give of strategic skill. 
At last, they were on the point of fighting, near the village of 
Sassbach, on a spot which Turenne had selected, and where he 
made sure of being victorious, when the marshal, whilst observing 
the position of a battery, was killed by a cannon-ball, which carried 
off likewise the arm of Saint- Hilaire, lieutenant-general *of the 
Artillery (July 27, 1675). His death was, for France, a public 
calamity. In order to honour the best captain of the age, Louis 
XIV. authorized his being buried at Saint-Denis, in the midst of 
the sepultures of the kings. 

Europe demanded a general peace ; England and Holland Alliance 
desired it passionately. " I am as anxious as you for an end to England 
be put to the war," said the prince of Orange to the deputies from and Hol- 
the Estates, " provided that I get out of it with honour." He ^° * 
refused obstinately to separate from his allies. William had just 
married (I^ovember 15, 1677) the Princess Mary, eldest daughter 
of the duke of York and Anne Hyde. An alliance offensive and 
defensive between England and Holland was the price of this 
union, which struck Louis XIV. an unexpected blow. He had 
lately made a proposal to the prince of Orange to marry one of 
his natural daughters. " The first notice I had of the marriage," 
wrote the king, " was through the bonfires lighted in London." 
" The loss of a decisive battle could not have scared the king of 
France more," said the English ambassador. Lord Montagu. For 
more than a year past negotiations had been going on at Kimeguen ; 
Lonis XIV. resolved to deal one more great blow. 

The campaign of 1676 had been insignificant, save at sea. John 
Bart, a corsair of Dunkerque, scoured the seas and made foreign 
commerce tremble ; he took ships by boarding, and killed with his 
own hands the Dutch captain of the Neptune, who offered resist- 
ance. Messina, in revolt against the Spaniards, had given herself 
up to France ; the duke of Vivonne, brother of Madame de 
Montespan, who had been sent thither as governor, had extended 
his conquests ; Duquesne, quite young still, had triumphantly 
maintained the glory of France against the great Ruyter, who had 
been mortally wounded off Catana on the 21st of April. But 
already the possession of Sicily was becoming precarious, and these 
distant successes had paled before the brilliant campaign of 1677 ; Campaign 
the capture of Valenciennes, Cambrai, and St. Omer, the defence of 1677. 



3S2 History of France. 

of Lorraine, the victory of Cassel gained over the prince of Orange, 
had confirmed the king in his intentions. " We have done all 
that we were able and bound to do," wrote William of Orange to 
the Estates on the 13th of April, 1677, "and we are very sorry 
to he obliged to tell your High Mightinesses that it has not pleased 
God to bless, on this occasion, the arms of the State under our 
guidance." Ghent was invested by the French on the 1st of March 
and capitulated on the 11th ; Ypres in its turn succumbed on the 
25th after a vigorous resistance. Louis XIV. sent his ultiviatum 
to Nimeguen. 
Its results. ^^ ^^^^ 10th of August, in the evening, the special peace between 
Holland and France was signed after twenty-four hours' conference. 
The prince of Orange had concentrated all his forces near Mons, 
confronting Marshal Luxembourg, who occupied the plateau of 
Casteau ; he had no official news as yet from I^Timeguen, and, on 
the 14th, he began the engagement outside the abbey of St. Denis. 
The affair was a very murderous one and remained indecisive : it 
did more honour to the military skill of the prince of Orange than 
to his loyalty. Holland had not lost an inch of her territory during 
this war, so long, so desperate, and notoriously undertaken in order 
to destroy her ; she had spent much money, she had lost many men, 
she had shaken the confidence of her allies by treating alone and 
being the first to treat, but she had furnished a chief to the Euro- 
pean coalition, and she had shown an example of indomitable 
resistance ; the States-general and the prince of Orange alone, 
besides Louis XIV., came the greater out of the struggle. The king 
of England had lost all consideration both at home and abroad, and 
Spain paid all the expenses of the war. 
A.D. 1677, Peace was concluded on the 17th of September, thanks to the 
wf^*l!..?»„ energetic intervention of the Hollanders. The king restored 
Courtray, Audenarde, Ath, and Charleroi, which had been given 
him by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Ghent, Limburg and St. 
Ghislain ; but he kept by definitive right St. Omer, Cassel, Aire, 
Ypres, Cambray, Bouchain, V^alenciennes, and all Franche-Comte ; 
henceforth he possessed in the north of France a line of places 
extending from Dunkerque to the Meuse; the S]Danish monarchy 
was disarmed. 

It still required a successful campaign under Marshal Crequi 
to bring the emperor and the German princes over to peace ; ex- 
changes of territory and indemnities re-established the treaty of 
Westphalia on all essential points. The duke of Lorraine refused 
the conditions on which the king proposed to restore to him his 
duchy ; so Louis XIV. kept Lorraine. 



Nimeguen. 



Brilliant successes of Louis XIV. 383 

The king of France was at the pinnacle of his greatness and 

power. " Singly against all," as Louvois said, he had maintained 

the struggle against Europe, and he came out of it victorious \ 

everywhere, with good reason, was displayed his proud device, 

Nee ijlurlbus impar. The prince of Orange regarded the peace of 

!N"imeguen as a truce, and a truce fraught with danger to Europe. 

For that reason did he soon seek to form alliances in order to secure 

the repose of the world against the insatiable ambition of King 

Louis XIV. Intoxicated by his successes and the adulation of his 

court, the king no longer brooked any objections to his will or any 

limits to his desires. Standing at the king's side and exciting his Louis XlV. 

pride and ambition, Louvois had little by little absorbed all the i^toxi- 

. ... • 1 /-, cated by 

functions of prime minister without bearing the title. Colbert success. 

alone resisted him, and he, weary of the struggle, was about to 
succumb before long (1683), driven to desperation by the burthens 
that the wars and the king's luxury caused to weigh heavily upon 
France. "Whilst all the contending parties disbanded their troops, 
Louis XIV. alone took advantage of the situation for the purpose 
of increasing his power by means which were very little short of 
actual warfare. By virtue of the last arrangements he had obtained 
the surrender of a certain number of towns and districts togeilier 
ivitli their dependencies. In order to ascertain what these depen- 
dencies were, he established at Tournay, at Metz, at Brisach and 
at Besancjon special courts, known as chambres de reunion, because "Cham'brea 
their business was to re-unite to France certain territories alleged , *? 
to have been dismembered fromthe cities of Flanders, Alsace, Trois- 
eveches, and Franche-Comte. Some German princes, the Elector 
Palatine, and the king of Spain were obliged to appear by deputy 
and make their respective titles good ;' and sentences supported by 
force gave to Louis XIV. twenty important military positions, Saru- 
briick, Deux-Ponts, Luxemburg, Montbeliard, and especially Stras- 
burg, which Vauban fortified, thus making the strongest barrier of 
the kingdom on the Ehenish frontier (1681). In Italy, Louis XIV. 
purchased Casal in the Montferrate from the duke of Mantua, in 
order to command the north of the peninsula and Piedmont, which 
he was already in a certain sense master of by the possession of 
Pignerol. 

He was, however, himself about to deal his own kingdom a blow 
more fatal than all those of foreign wars and of the European coali- 
tion. He had been carrying matters with a very high hand in 
other quarters. The stronghold of the Algerian pirates Avas twice 
bombarded by Duquesne (1683) ; the republic of Genoa which had 
supplied them with arms and ships, found itself compelled to make 



reunion." 



384 



History of France, 



edict of 
Nantes. 



amende lionorahle in the person of the Doge, who, contrary to the 
laws of the state, came to Versailles (1685). Pope Innocent XI. 
himself incurred the resentment of the king for attempting to 
abolish the right of asylum which the French ambassadors had till 
then enjoyed in Rome (1687). The glory of Louis XIY. seemed 
to extend to the remotest limits of the known world, and the king of 
Sianl sent to Versailles an embassy which created, at .the time, the 
greatest sensation. Intoxicated by so much success and so many vic- 
tories, he fancied that consciences, were to be bent like States, and he 
set about bringing all his subjects back to the Catholic faith. Himself 
returning to a regular life, under the influence of age and of Madame 
de Maintenon, he thought it a fine thing to establish in his kingdom 
that unity of religion which Henry IV. and Eichelieu had not been 
able to bring about. He set at nought all the rights consecrated 
by edicts, and the long patience of those Protestants whom Mazarin 
called "the faithful flock ;" in vain had persecution been tried for 
several years past ; tyranny interferred, and the edict of Nantes 
A.D. 1685. '^^s revoked on the 13th of October, 1685. Some years later, the 
Revocation reformers, by hundreds of thousands carried into foreign lands their 
industries, their wealth and their bitter resentments. Protestant 
Europe, indignant, opened her doors to these martyrs to conscience, 
living witnesses of the injustice and arbitrary power of Louis XIV. 
All the princes felt themselves at the same time insulted and 
threatened in respect of their faith as well as of their puissance. 
In the early months of 1686, the league of Augsburg united all the 
German princes, Holland and Sweden; Spain and the duke of 
Savoy were not slow to join it. In 1687, the diet of Eatisbonne 
refused to convert the twenty years' truce into a definitive peace. 
By his haughty pretensions the king gave to the coalition the sup- 
port of Pope Innocent XL ; Louis XIV. was once more single- 
handed against all, when he invaded the electorate of Cologne in 
the month of August, 1686. Philipsburg, lost by France in 1676, 
was recovered on the 29th of October; at the end of the campaign, 
the king's armies were masters of the Palatinate. In the month 
of January, 1689, war was officially declared against Holland, the 
emperor and the empire. The command-in-chief of the French 
forces was entrusted to the Dauphin, then twenty-six years of age. 
" I give you an opportunity of making your merit known," said 
Louis XIV. to his son : " exhibit it to all Europe, so that when I 
come to die it shall not be perceived that the king is dead." 

The Dauphin was already tasting the pleasures of conquest, and 
the coalition had not stirred. They were awaiting their chief; 
William of Orange was fighting for them in the very act of taking 



The wa 
re-com- 
mences. 



The Palatinate once more ravaged. 385 

possession of the kingdom of England. The revolution of 1688 
was the answer made to the revocation of the edict of Nantes. 
Louis XIV. received James II., affected to treat him as a king, and 
commenced extensive preparations for his re-establishment. Hence 
a general explosion against France ; war broke out in four different 
quarters simultaneously. James II. appeared in Ireland, besieged to 
no purpose the town of Londonderrj'^, and lost against William III. 
himself the battle of the Boyne, where a regiment of French 
colonists, commanded by Schomberg, did much harm to the troops 
of Louis XIV. (1690). At the same time the French fleet under Naval en- 
the orders of d'Estrees and Tourville obtained a decided victory at ^ ^ ' 

Beachy-Head. It required two years to fit out a new expedition, 
composed of thirty vessels and which was entrusted to d'Estrees, 
who had directions to occupy the Mediterranean, whilst Tourville, 
with forty-four sail, remained in the British Channel. An engage- 
ment took place at La Hogue (1692), which turned to the utter 
discomfiture of the French, and completely put an end to the hopes 
still entertained by James II. The whole fleet of Louis XIV. was 
defeated, and fourteen of the ships which composed it were burnt 
down. On the Ehine, the Dauphin, at the head of 100,000 men, 
with the assistance of marshal de Duras, took Philipsburg, "Worms, 
Manheim, and by the order of Louvois the Palatinate was once Second de 
more subjected to all the horrors of wholesale destruction by sword ^J'\^^*p^ 
and fire. This piece of unwarrantable atrocity is said to have been latinate. 
the cause of Louvois's disgrace, who died shortly afterwards. 

In Italy Catinat kept his ground against Victor- Amadeus, duke 
of Savoy, and against prince Eugene, who, in consequence of an 
act of injustice on the part of Louis XtV., had joined the enemy. 
The French general defeated the allies at StatRirde, and three 
years afterwards at Marsaglia ; but compelled as he was to see his 
foot soldiers withdrawn from his command for the purpose of 
strengthening other divisions of the French army ; he was himself 
obliged merely to keep the defensive. 

The most brilliant episodes of the war took place in the N'ether- 
lauds. Luxembourg, whose military talents and whose energy 
have often caused him to be compared with Conde, defeated 
the prince of Waldeck at Fleurus (1690), then took possession 
of Mons under the eyes of William III., who had come from Ire- Battles of 
land on purpose to relieve the town, and finally made himself Staffarde 
master of Namur during the following campaign (1692). The king Fleurus. 
was present on both these occasions, and his favourite poet Boileau 
celebrated the taking of Namur in an ode which is generally con- 
sidered one of his weakest compositions. The battle of Steinkirk 

G 



%S6 



History of France. 



was an act of skill whicli reflected the greatest credit upon Marslial 
Luxembourg. Exhausted hy the fatigues of war and the pleasures 
of tlie court, he died on the 4th of January, 1695, at sixty-seven 
years of age. An able general, a "worthy pupil of the great Conde, 
a courtier of much wits and no shame, he was more corrupt than 
his age, and his private life was injurious to his fame; he died, 
however, as people did die in his time, turning to God at the last 
day. " I haven't lived like M. de Luxembourg," said Bourdaloue, 
" but I should like to die like him." History has forgotten Marshal 
Luxembourg's death and remembered his life. 

Louis XIV. had lost Conde and Turenne, Luxembourg, Colbert, 
Louvois and Seignelay ; with the exception of Vauban, he had 
exhausted the first rank ; Catinat alone remained in the second ; 
the king was about to be reduced to the third : sad fruits of a long 
reign, of an incessant and devouring activity, which had speedily 
used up men and was beginning to tire out fortune ; grievous result 
of mistakes long hidden by glory, but glaring out at last before the 
eyes most blinded by prejudice ! By detaching the duke of Savoy 
from the coalition, Louis XIV. struck a fatal blow at the great 
alliance : the campaign of 1696 in Germany and in Flanders had 
resolved itself into mere observations and insignificant engagements; 
Holland and England were exhausted, and their commerce was 
ruined ; in vain did Parliament vote fresh and enormous supplies : 
*' I should want ready money," wrote William III. to Heinsius, 
" and my poverty is really incredible." 

There was no less cruel want in France. " I calculate that in 
these latter days more than a tenth part of the people," said 
Vauban, " are reduced to beggary and in fact beg." Sweden had 
for a long time been proffering mediation ; conferences began on the 
9th of May, 1697, at Nieuburg, a castle belonging to William III., 
near the village of Eyswick. Three great halls opened one into 
another ; the French and the plenipotentiaries of the coalition of 
princes occupied the two wings, the mediators sat in the centre. 
Before arriving at Eyswick, the most important points of the treaty 
between France and William III. were already settled. 

France offered restitution of Strasburg, Luxembourg, Mons, 
Charlevoi and Dinant, restoration of the House of Lorraine, with 
the conditions proposed at Nimeguen, and recognition of the king 
of England. " We have no equivalent to claim," said the French 
plenipotentiaries haughtily ; " your masters have never taken any- 
thing from ours." 

On the 27th of July a preliminary deed was signed between Mar- 
shal Boufflers and Bentinck, earl of Portland, the intimate friend of 



The Spanish succession. 387 

King William ; the latter left the army and retired to his castle of 

Loo ; there it was that he heard of the capture of Barcelona by the 

duke of Vendome ; Spain, which had hitherto refused to take part 

in the negotiations, lost all courage and loudly demanded peace, but 

France withdrew her concessions on the subject of Strasburg, and 

proposed to give as equivalent Friburg in Brisgau and Brisach. 

William III. did not hesitate. Heinsius signed the peace in the 

name of the States-general on the 20th of September at midnight; 

the English and Spanish plenipotentiaries did the same ; the 

emperor and the empire were alone in still holding out : the 

Emperor Leopold made pretensions to regulate in advance the 

Spanish succession, and the Protestant princes refused to accept 

the maintenance of the Catholic worship in all the places in which 

Louis XIV. had restored it. 

Here aoain the will of William III. prevailed over the irreso- Tjie fron 

. . ... tiers of 

lution of his allies. For the first time since Cardinal Eichelieu France 

France moved back her frontiers by the signature of a treaty, moved 
She had gained the important place of Strasburg, but she lost *** * 
nearly all she had won by the treaty of Mmeguen in the Low 
Countries and in Germany ; she kept Franche-Comte, but she gave 
up Lorraine. Louis XIV. had wanted to aggrandise himself at any 
price and at any risk ; he was now obliged to precipitately break 
up the grand alliance, for King Charles 11. was slowly dying at 
Madrid, and the Spanish succession was about to open. Ignorant 
of the supreme evils and sorrows which awaited him on this fatal 
path, the king of France began to forget, in this distant prospect 
of fresh aggrandisement and war, the checks that his glory and his 
policy had just met with. 

The competitors for the succession were numerous ; the king of The 
France and the emperor claimed their rights in the name of gu^JiMion. 
their mothers and wives, daughters of Philip III. and Philip IV. ; 
the elector of Bavaria put up the claims of his son by right of his 
mother, Mary Antoinette of Austria, daughter of the emperor ; for 
a short time Charles II. had adopted this young prince ; the child 
died suddenly at Madrid in 1699.' The persons most interested 
in the succession had not thought proper either to obtain the 
king's consent or to wait for his demise before dividing his pos- 
sessions between themselves ; they had even made a partition 
twice, and had satisfied none of the claimants. Charles was 
informed of this unwarrantable arrangement, and under the 
impressions of disgust which it excited in him, he named as 
his successor Philip, duke d'Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV. 

* See the genealogical tree at the end of this chapter. 
OC 2 



A D 1702. 
Death cf 



388 History of France. 

After a pretence of deliberation the king accepted, and sonding 
Philip to take possession of his throne he said to him : "For the 
future, the Pyrenees exist no longer." He thus betrayed his true 
political designs. Some other measures quite as significative roused 
once more the anger of Europe, and produced a fresh coalition. 
Death removed William III. (1702) shortly after he had suc- 
Wilfiam ceeded in organizing a formidable league against France ; but 'his 
III. system of policy prevailed, because it was the expression of the 

English national v\^ill. Three men, whom their hatred of France 
has rendered illustrious, Heinsius, the duke of Marlborough, and 
prince Eugene, stepped by their close union into the positions held 
by the leaders whom the allies had just lost. Heinsius was grand- 
pensioner of Holland, and directed the affairs of the common- 
wealth with the authority of a monarch. Marlborough had made 
his debut as a soldier under Turenne ; he governed queen Anne by 
his wile, the parliament by his friends, the cabinet by his son-in- 
law Sunderland, secretary of state for war, and by the treasurer 
Godolphin whom a matrimonial connection had likewise brought 
into his family. "We have already said why prince Eugene had 
joined the coalition. 

To triumph over such formidable opponents Louis XIV. Avould 
have required the illustrious generals of the preceding generation, 
Ineffi- but they were either dead or worn out, and the heavy atmosphere 
ciency of of Versailles produced none that could continue their work. Like 
statesmen ^ ^'^^^ which has given too luxuriant a crop, France was becoming 
exhausted, and the king was on the point of seeing soldiers failing 
just as much as generals and cabinet ministers. The inefficient 
Chamillard, the creature of Madame de Maintenon, gave way under 
the double weight of the treasury and the Avar administration, 
which Colbert and Louvois had divided between themselves. 
Louis XIV. thought he would counteract Chamillard's Aveakness by 
directing him, and never indeed did he show more activity. But 
here, too, obstacles of another kind arrested him. He had no 
experience of either men or things ; he hampered his generals with 
directions which they were tu observe punctually and which often 
brought about the worst results. " Si le general," says Voltaire, 
*' voulait faire quelque grande entreprise, il fallait qu'il en demandat 
]a permission par un courrier, qui trouvait a son re tour, ou I'occa- 
sion manquee, ou le general battu." And yet some of the com- 
manders whom France had still, Villars, Catinat, Boufflers, Ven- 
dome, deserved more confidence and greater liberty of action. It 
is trae that men like Villeroi, Marein, Tallard, La Feuillade, 
required advice and the assistance of trustworthy guides, but the 



Louis XIV. single-handed against Europe, 389 

fact of keeping them in leading strings did not prevent tliem from 
inflicting irreparable disasters upon the French arms. 

The campaigns of 1702 and 1703 had shown Marlborough to he 
a prudent and bold soldier, fertile in resources and novel concep- 
tions j and those had earned him the thanks of Parliament and the 
title of duke. The campaign of 1704 established his glory upon 
the misfortunes of France. Marshals Tallard and Marsin were 
commanding in Germany together with the elector of Bavaria; the Louis XIV. 
emperor, threatened with a fresh insurrection in Hungary, recalled ^^ 
Prince Eugene from Italy ; Marlborough effected a junction with single- 
him by a rapid march, which Marshal Villeroi would fain have hin- lianded. 
dered but to no purpose ; on the ISfch of August, 1704, the hostile . .j. ^wq- 
armies met between Blenheim and Hochstett, near the Danube ; Battle of 
the forces were about equal, but on the French side the counsels ^^^'^^'^J?' 
were divided, the various corps acted independently, Tallard sus- 
tained single-handed the attack of the English and the Dutch com- 
manded by Marlborough ; he was made prisoner, his son was killed 
at his side ; the cavalry, having lost their leader and being pressed 
by the enemy, took to flight in the direction of the Danube ; many 
officers and soldiers perished in the river ; the slaughter was awful. 
Marsin and the elector, who had repulsed five successive charges of 
Prince Eugene, succeeded in effecting their retreat ; but the elec- 
torates of Bavaria and Cologne were lost, Landau was recovered by 
the allies after a siege of two months, the French army recrossed the 
Ehine, Alsace was uncovered and Germany evacuated. 

The defeat of Hochstett in 1704 had been the first step down 
the ladder ; the defeat of Eamilies on the 23rd of May, 1706, was 
the second. The king's personal attachment to Marshal Yilleroi 
blinded him as to his military talents. Beaten in Italy by Prince 
Eugene, Villeroi, as presumptuous as he was incapable, hoped to 
retrieve himself against Marlborough. There had been eight hours 
fighting at Hochstett, inflicting much damage upon the enemy ; a 
Eamilies, the Bavarians took to their heels at the end of an hour ; A.D. 1706 
the French, who felt that they were badly commanded, followed families 
their example ; the rout was terrible and the disorder inexpressible : (May 23). 
Villeroi kept recoiling before the enemy, Marlborough kept advan- 
cing ; two thirds of Belgium and sixteen strong places were lost, 
when Louis XIV. sent Chamillard into the Low Countries ; it was 
no longer the time when Louvois made armies spring from the very 
soil, and when Vauban prepared the defence of Dunkerque. The 
king recalled Villeroi, showing him to the last unwavering kind- 
ness. " There is no more luck at our age, marshal," was all he said 
to ViUeroi on his arrival at Versailles. The king summoned Ven- 



390 



History of France. 



dome, to place tim at the head of the army of Flanders, " in hopes 
of restoring to it the spirit of vigour and audacity natural to the 
French nation," as he himself says. For two years past, amidst a 
great deal of ill-success, Vendome had managed to keep in check 
Victor Amadeo and Prince Eugene, in spite of the emharrassment 
caused him by his brother the grand prior, the duke of La Feuil- 
lade, Chamillard's son-in-law, and the orders which reached h m 
directly from the king ; he had gained during his two campaigns the 
name of taker of toions, and had just beaten the Austrians in the 
battle of Cascinato. Prince Eugene had, however, crossed the 
Adige and the Po when Vendome left Italy ; he effected his junction 
with Victor Amadeo, encountered and defeated the French army 
between the rivers Doria' and Stora. Marsin was killed, discourage- 
ment spread amongst the generals and the troops, and the siege of 
of Turin was raised ; before the end of the year, nearly all the 
places were lost, and Dauphiny was threatened. Victor Amadeo 
refused to listen to a special peace; in the month of March, 1707, 
the prince of Vaudemont, governor of Milaness for the king of 
Spain, signed a capitulation at Mantua, and led back to France the 
troops which still remained to him. The imperialists were masters 
of JSTaples. Spain no longer had any possessions in Italy. 

Philip V. had been threatened with the loss of Spain as well as 
of Italy. For two years past Archduke Charles, under the title of 
Charles III., had, with the support of England and Portugal, been 
disputing the crown with the young king. Philip V. had lost 
Catalonia and had just i'ailed in his attempt to retake Barcelona ; 
the road to Madrid was cut off, the army was obliged to make its 
way by Roussillon and Beam to resume the campaign ; the king 
threw himself in person into his capital, whither he was escorted 
by Marshal Berwick, a natural son of James II., a Frenchman by 
choice, full of courage and resolution, " but a great stick of an 
Englishman who hadn't a word to say," and who was distasteful 
to the young queen Marie-Louise. Philip V. could not remain at 
Madrid, which was threatened by the enemy : he removed to 
Burgos ; the English entered the capital and there proclaimed 
Charles IIL 

This was too much ; Spain could not let herself submit to have 
an Austrian king imposed upon her by heretics and Portuguese ; 
the campaign of 1707 was signalized in Spain by the victory of 
Almanza, gained on the 1 3th of April by Marshal Berwick over the 
Anglo-Porfcuguese army, and by the capture of Lerida, which capitu- 
lated on the 11th of November into the hands of the duke of 
Orleans. In Germany, Villars drove back the enemy from the 



Campaign of I'JO'J. 391 

banks of the Rhine, advanced into Suabia and ravaged the Palati- 
nate, crushing the countiy with requisitions, of which he openly 
reserved a portion for himself. " Marshal Villars is doing very 
well for himself," said somebody one day to the king. " Yes," 
answered his Majesty, " and for me too." "I wrote to the king that 
I really must fat my calf," said Villars. 

The inexhaustible elasticity and marvellous resources of France 
were enough to restore some hope in 1707. The invasion of 
Provence by Victor Amadeo and Prince Eugene, their check before 
Toulon and their retreat precipitated by the rising of the peasants, 
had irritated the allies ; the attempts at negotiation which the king 
had entered upon at the Hague remained without result ; the duke 
of Burgundy took the command of the armies of Flanders with 
Vendome for his second. On the 5th of July, Ghent was surprised ; 
Vendome had intelligence inside the place, the Belgians were weary 
of their new masters : " The States have dealt so badly with this 
country," said Marlborough, " that all the towns are ready to play 
us the same trick as Ghent the moment they have the opportunity." 
Bruges opened its gates to the French. Prince Eugene advanced 
to second Marlborough, but he was late in starting ; the troops of 
the elector of- Bavaria harassed his march. The English enconn- , jj -«q- 
tered the French army in front of Audenarde. The engagement Battle of 
began. Vendome, who commanded the right wing, sent word to 7r^ j "fi\ 
the duke of Burgundy. The latter hesitated and delayed ; the 
generals about him did not approve of Vendome's movement. He 
fought single-handed, and was beaten. The excess of confidence 
of one leader and the inertness of the other caused failure in all 
the operations of the campaign ; Prince Eugene and the duke of 
Marlborough laid siege to Lille, which was defended by old Marshal 
Boufflers, the bravest and the most respected of all the king's 
servants. Lille was not relieved, and fell on the 25th of October j 
the citadel held out until the 9th of December ; the king heaped 
rewards on Marshal Boufflers ; at the march out from Lille, Prince 
Eugene had ordered all his army to pay him the same honours as 
to himself. Ghent and Bruges were abandoned to the imperialists. 

The campaign in Spain had not been successful ; the duke of 
Orleans, weary of his powerlessness, and under suspicion at the 
court of Philip V., had given up the command of the troops ; the 
English admiral, Leake, had taken possession of Sardinia, of the 
island of Minorca and of Port Mahon ; the archduke was master 
of the isles and of the sea. The destitution in France was fearful, 
and the winter so severe that the poor were in want of everything ; . ®3 ^" . 
riots multiplied in the towns ; the king sent his plate to the Mint, France. 



392 



History of France. 



Conditions 
of peace 
proposed 
and dis> 
cussed. 



War 

recom- 
mences. 



and put liis jewels in pawn ; he likewise took a resolution, which 
cost him even more, he determined to ask for peace. He offered 
the Hollanders a very extended barrier in the Low Countries and 
all the facilities they had long been asking for their commerce. 
He accepted the abandonment of Spain to the archduke and merely 
claimed to reserve to his grandson, l^aples, Sardinia and Sicily. 
This was what was secured to him by the second treaty of partition 
lately concluded between England, the United Provinces and 
France ; he did not even demand Lorraine. President Eouille, 
formerly French envoy to Lisbon, arrived disguised in Holland ; 
conferences were opened secretly at Bodegraven. 

Led on by his fidelity to the allies, distrustful and suspicious as 
regarded France, burning to avenge the wrongs put upon the 
republic, Heinsius, in concert witli Marlborough and Prince Eugene, 
required, conditions so hard that the French agent scarcely dared 
transmit them to Versailles. What was demanded was the abdi- 
cation pure and simple of Philip V. ; Holland merely promised her 
good offices to obtain in his favour Naples and Sicily ; England 
claimed Dunkerque ; Germany wanted Strasburg and the renewal 
of the peace of Westphalia ; Victor Amadeo aspired to recover 
Nice and Savoy ; to the Dutch barrier stipulated for at Eyswick 
were to be added Lille, Conde and Tournay. In vain Avas the 
matter discussed article by article ; in their short-sighted resentment 
the allies had overstepped reason. The young king of Spain felt 
this when he wrote to his grandfather : " I am transfixed at the 
chimerical and insolent pretensions of the English and Dutch 
regarding the preliminaries of peace ; never were seen the like. I 
am beside myself at the idea that anybody could have so much as 
supposed that I should be forced to leave Spain as long as I have a 
drop of blood in my veins. I will use all my eflforts to maintain 
myself upon a throne on which God has placed me and on which 
you, after Him, have set me, and nothing but death shall wrench 
me from it or make me yield it." War recommenced on all sides. 
The king had just consented at last to give Chamillard his discharge. 
" Sir, I shall die over the job," had for a long time been the com- 
plaint of the minister worn out with fatigue. " Ah ! well, we will 
die together," had been the king's rejoinder. 

France was dying, and Chamillard was by no means a stranger 
to the cause. Louis XIV. put in his place Voysin, former super- 
intendent of Hainault, entirely devoted to Madame de Maintenon. 
He loaded with benefits the minister from whom he was parting, 
the only one whom he had really loved. The troops were destitute 
of everything. On assuming the command of the army of the Lovir 



Malplaquet and Villaviciosa, 393 

Countries Yillars wrote in despair, *' Imagine the horror of seeing 
an army without bread ! " In spite of such privations and sufferings, 
Villars found the troops in excellent spirits, and urged the king to 
permit him to give battle. " M. de Turenne used to say that he 
who means to altogther avoid battle gives up his country to him 
who appears to seek for it," the marshal assured him ; the king was 
afraid of losing his last army ; the dukes of Ha,rcourt and Berwick 
were covering the Ehine and the Alps ; Marlborough and Prince 
Eugene, who had just made themselves masters of Tournay, inarched 
against Yillars, whom they encountered on the 11th of September, 
1709, near the hamlet of Malplaquet. Marshal Boufflers had just 
reached the army to serve as a volunteer. Villars had entrenched ^ jj ^^09 
himself in front of the woods ; his men were so anxious to get Battle of 
under fire that they threw away the rations of bread just served ^^'Pl^- 
out ; the allies looked sulkily at the works : "We are going to fight (Sept. 11), 
moles again," they said. The allies won the victory, but they had 
lost more than twenty thousand men, according to their official 
account. " It was too much for this victory, which did not entail 
the advantage of entirely defeating the enemy, and the whule fruits 
of which were to end with the taking of Mons." 

This glorious defeat was followed by a triumph of a more decided 
character. Louis XIV. sent into Spain the Duke de Vendome who 
was in disgrace since the famous campaign of Audenarde. His 
name alone was worth an army. A number of volunteers crowded 
under his command, and Philip V. who as yet had not appeared on 
any field of battle, placed himself at the head of his troops. The 
Spaniards, roused up at the voice of the king, began against the 
imperial forces a guerilla warfare which proved fatal to their 
invaders ; and, finally, the archduke's troops, headed by count 
Stahrenberg, were thoroughly routed at Villaviciosa (December 9th ^^- 1710. 
1710). It is reported that after the battle, Philip V. being over- viHa- 
come with fatigue, Vendome said to him : " Sire, I shall make up viciosa 
for you the finest bed that ever king had to lie upon;" and, (^^^o. 9). 
accordingly, he heaped up together as a cover all , the colours that 
had been taken from the enemy. The victory of Villaviciosa not 
only saved the crown of Philip V., but also prevented Louis XIV. 
from losing Canada. An English expedition was fitted out to 
occupy that colony, but the success of Vendome obliged it to remain 
in observation on the coast of Spain. 

This unexpected act of vigour on the part of a monarch whoso 
ruin seemed certain astonished the allies ; they, besides, were becom- 
ing weary of the war, especially the English, whose finances were in 
a precarious condition. A court intrigue, which ended in the down- 



394 



History of France. 



Disasters 

in the 
Court of 
Versailles. 



fall of tlie Whig administration and the disgrace of the duchess of 
Marlborough, brought matters to a crisis. The Tories, called to 
the direction of the government, tried to establish their credit on 
peaceful measures. Secret negociations between France and England 
were begun ; after the death of the Emperor (April 17th, 1711) they 
became public, a suspension of arms was immediately decided, and 
the preliminaries of peace were signed in London on the 8th of 
October following. This example decided the allies ; a congress 
assembled at Utrecht on the 29th of January, 1712. The new 
Emperor refused to have anything to do witli it ; but the forces 
were now equal, and one campaign proved to the Emperor that he 
could not single-handed hope to reduce France. 

The bolts of Heaven were falling one after another upon the royal 
family of France. On the Uth of April, 1711, Louis XIV. had 
lost by small-pox his son, the grand dauphin, a mediocre and sub- 
missive creature, ever the most humble subject of the king, at just 
fifty years of age. His eldest sou, the duke of Burgundy, devout, 
austere and capable, the hope of good men and the terror of 
intriguers, had taken the rank of dauphin, and was seriously com- 
mencing his apprenticeship in government, when he was carried off 
on the 18th of February, 1712, by spotted fever irougeole pouvpvee), 
six days after his wife, the charming Mary Adelaide of Savoy, the 
idol of the whole court, supremely beloved by the king, and by 
Madame de Maintenon, who had brought her up ; their son, the 
duke of Brittany, four years old, died on the 8th of March ; a child 
in the cradle, weakly and ill, the little duke of Anjou remained the 
only shoot of the elder branch of the Bourbons. Dismay seized 
upon all France ; poison was spoken of ; the duke of Orleans was 
accused ; it was necessary to have a post mortem examination ; only 
the hand of God had left its traces. Europe in its turn was 
excited. If the little duke of Anjou were to die, the crown of 
France reverted to Philip V. The Hollanders and the ambassadors 
of the emperor Charles VI., recently crowned at Frankfurt, insisted 
on the necessity of a formal renunciation. In accord with the 
English ministers, Louis XIV. wrote to his grandson: — 

"You will be told what England proposes, that you should 
renounce your birthright, retaining the monarchy of Spain and the 
of Spain. Indies, or renounce the monarchy of Spain, retaining your rights to 



letter of 
Louis XIV, 



the succession in France, and receiving in exchange for the crown 
of Spain the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, the States of the duke 
of Savoy, Montferrat and the Mantuan, the said duke of Savoy suc- 
ceeding you in Spain ; I confess to you that, notwithstanding the 
disproportion in the dominions, I have been sensibly affected by 



Villars in Flanders. 395 

the thought that you would continue to reign, that I might still 
regard you as my successor, sure, if the dauphin lives, of a regent 
accustomed to command, capable of maintaining order in my king- 
dom, and of stifling its cabals. If this child were to die, as his weakly 
complexion gives too much reason to suppose, you would enjoy the 
succession to me following the order of your birth, and I should 
have the consolation of leaving to my people a virtuous king, 
capable of commanding them, and one who, on succeeding me, 
would unite to the crown States so considerable as Is'aples, Savoy, 
Piedmont and Montferrat. If gratitude and affection towards your 
subjects are to you pressing reasons for remaining with them, I may 
say that you owe me the same sentiments ; you owe them to your 
own house, to your own country, before Spain. All that I can do 
for you is to leave you once more the choice, the necessity for con- 
cluding peace becoudng every day more urgent." 

The choice of Philip Y. was made ; he had already written to 
his grandfather to say that he would renounce all his rights of suc- 
cession to the throne of France rather than give up the crown of 
Spain. This decision was solemnly enregistered by the Cortes 
The English required that the dukes of Berry and Orleans should 
likewise make renunciation of their rights to the crown of Spain. 
Negotiations began again, but war began again at the same time as 
the negotiations. 

The king had given Villars the command of the army of Flanders, Villars 

The marshal went to Marly to receive his last orders. " You see **^^s the 

. command 

my plight, marshal," said Louis XIV. "There are few examples ofthe 

of what is my fate — to lose in the same week a grandson, a grand- a^^^Y i"^ 
son's wife and their son, all of very great promise and very tenderly 
beloved. God is punishing me ; I have well deserved it. But sus- 
pend we my griefs at my own domestic woes, and look we to what 
may be done to prevent those of the kingdom. If anything were to 
happen to the army you command, what would be your idea of the 
course I should adopt as regards my person ? " The marshal hesi- 
tated. The king resumed : " This is what I think ; you shall tell 
me your opinion afterwards. I know the courtiers' line of argu- 
ment ; they nearly all wish me to retire to Elois, and not wait for 
the enemy's army to approach Paris, as it might do if mine were 
beaten. For my part, I am aware that armies so considerable are 
never defeated to such an extent as to prevent the greater part of 
mine from retiring upon the Sonime. I know that river, it is very 
difficult to cross ; there are forts, too, which could be made strong. 
I should count upon getting to Peronne or St. Quentin, and there 
massing all the troops I had, making a last effort with you, and 



396 



History of France. 



falling together or saving the kingdom ; I will never consent to let 
the enemy approach my capital \_Memoires de Villars, t. ii. p. 362]." 
God was to spare Louis XIV. that crowning disaster reserved for 
other times ; in spite of all his faults and of the culpable errors of 
his life and reign, Providence had given this old man, overwhelmed 
by so many reverses and sorrows, a truly royal soul, and that regard 
for his own greatness which set him higher as a king than he would 
have been as a man. " He had too proud a soul to descend lower 
than his misfortunes had brought him," says Montesqu'eu, " and he 
well knew that courage may right a crown and that infamy never 
Lon'sXIV *lo^^'" On the 25th of May, the king secretly informed his pleni- 
treats with potentiaries as well as his generals that the English were proposing 
England, ^q 'j^^^^ ^ suspension of hostilities, and he added : " It is no longer 
a time for flattering the pride of the Hollanders, but, whilst we treat 
with them in good faith, it must be with the dignity that becomes 
me." That which the king's pride refused to the ill will of the 
Hollanders he granted to the good will of England. The day 
of the commencement of the armistice Dunkerque was put as 
guarantee into the hands of the English, who recalled their native 
regiments from the army of Prince Eugene ; the king complained 
that they left him the auxiliary troops ; the English ministers pro- 
posed to prolong the truce, promising to treat separately with France 
if the allies refused assent to the peace. The news received by 
Louis XIV. gave him assurance of better conditions than any one 
had dared to hope for. 

Villars had not been able to prevent Prince Eugene from becom- 
ing master of Quesnoy on the 3rd of July ; the imperialists were 
already making preparations to invade Prance; in their army the 
causeway which connected Marchiennes with Landrecies was called 
the Paris road. The marshal resolved to relieve Landrecies, and, 
having had bridges thrown over the Scheldt, he crossed the river 
between Bouchain and Denain on the 23rd of July, 1712 ; the 
latter little place was defended by the duke of Albemarle, son of 
General Monk, with seventeen battalions of auxiliary troops in the 
pay of the allies. The Imperialist lines, stretching over a space of 
between twelve and fifteen leagues were too straggling, and the dif- 
ferent corps too far separated to be within reach of relieving one 
another. Villars took advantage of this mistake ; by a false attack 
towards Landrecies, he deceived Lhe Prince Eugene, and then march- 
ing with all speed upon Denain, where was the earl of Albemarle, 
he destroyed that general's camp and cut to pieces seventeen batta- 
lions (July 24, 1712). Eugene comes up ; he too is driven back. 
AU the posts on the bank of the Scarpe are successively carried, 



A.D. 1712 
Battle of 
Denain 
(July 23), 



Peace comluded. 397 

L^ndrecies is relieved, Douai, MarcMennes, BoTichain and Le 
yuesnoy are taken, and the frontiers of France become safe once 
more. 

The victory of Denain hastened the conckision of the peace. 
Three treaties were signed : 1st, that of Utrecht (April 11th, 1713), 
between France, Spain, Holland, Savoy and Portugal ; 2nd, that of 
Eastadt (March 7th, 1714), between France and Charles VI., 3rd, 
that of Baden (June 7th 1714), between France and the Empire. 
The treaty of Eastadt was delayed for one year on account of the 
obstinacy of Charles VL, who persisted in continuing the war 
although his allies had come to terms with Louis XIV. Villars, 
sent towards the Ehenish frontier where he found himself opposed 
to Prince Eugene, disconcerted the Imperial troops by the rapidity 
of his movements. He retook Landau, scaled at the head of his 
grenadiers the mountain of Eoskhof, which protected Friburg, and 
made himself master of this city. This brilliant success constrained 
at last the emperor to give to his subjects that peace with which for 
so long a time they had ceased to be acquainted. France kept Lan- 
dau and Fort Louis, she restored Spires, Brisach and Friburg. The 
emperor refused to recognize Philip V., but he accepted the status 
quo; the crown of Spain remained definitively with the house of signature 
Bourbon ; it had cost men and millions enough ; for an instant the ^^ ^^^ 
very foundations of order in Europe had seemed to be upset ; the ng ggn. 
old French monarchy had been threatened ; it had recovered of ditions. 
itself and by its own resources, sustaining single-handed the struggle 
which was pulling down all Europe in coalition against it ; it had 
obtained conditions which restored its frontiers to the limits of the 
peace of Eyswick ; but it was exhausted, gasping, at wits' end for 
men and money ; absolute power had obtained from national pride 
the last possible efforts, but it had played itself out in the struggle ; 
the confidence of the country was shaken ; it had been seen what 
dangers the will of a single man had made the nation incur ; the 
tempest was already gathering within men's souls. The habit of 
respect, the memory of past glories, the personal majesty of Louis 
XIV. still kept up about the aged king the deceitful appearances of 
uncontested power and sovereign authority ; the long decadence of 
his great-grandson's reign was destined to complete its ruin. 

"I loved war too much," was Louis XIV. 's confession on his General 
death -bed. He had loved it madly and-exclusively, but this fatal 
passion Avhich had ruined and corrupted France had not at any 
rate remained fruitless. liOuis XIV. had the good fortune to 
profit by the efforts of his predecessors as well as of his own 
servants : Eichelieu and Mazarin, Conde and Turenne, Luxem- 



39? History of France. 

bourg, Catinat, Yautan, YiEars and LouYois all toiled at tlie same 
■work ; under his reign, France was intoxicated with excess of the 
pride of conquest, but she did not lose all its fruits ; she witnessed 
the conclusion of five peaces, mostly glorious, the last sadly- 
honourable ; all tended to consolidate the unity and power of the 
kingdom ; it is to the treaties of the Pyrenees, of Westphalia, of 
ISTimeguen, of Ryswick, and of Utrecht, all signed in the name of 
Louis XIY., that France owed Eoussillon, Artois, Alsace, Flanders 
and Franche-Comte. Her glory has more than once cost her 
dear, it has never been worth so much and such solid increment to 
her territory. 



1 



COMPETITORS FOR THE SPANISH SUCCESSION. 

France. 

Louis XIV. = Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV. of Spain 

I 
Louia, Dauphin=Maria Anna of Bavaria 



Lotiis, Duke of Burgundy Philip, Duke of Anjou, Charles, Duke of Berry 

I King of Spain as Philip V. 

I Nov. 1700 
Louis XV. 



Bavaeia. 
Leopold I. Emperor=Maria Margarita, younger daughter of Philip IV. of Spain 

Maria Antonia, Archduchess=Maximilian, Elector of Bavaria 
I 
Joseph Ferdinand, Electoral Prince of Bavaria 
declared heir to the Spanish throne, 1698, d. 6th February, 1699 



Austria. 

Maria Anna,=2Ferdinand III. Emperor 
younger daughter of I 
Philip III. of Spain | 

Leopold I. Emperors= Maria Margarita daughter of Philip IV. 

Joseph I. Emperor, 1705. Charies Francis Joseph 

declared King of Spain, 1700 
Emperor, 1711. 




CHAPTER XII. 



LOUIS XIV. 



-HOME ADMINISTRATION. — LITERATURE. — THE COURT AND 
SOCIETY. 



It is King Louis XIV.'s distinction and heavy Lurthen in the 

eyes of history that it is impossible to tell of anything in his reign 

without constantly recurring to himself. He had two ministers of 

the higher order, Colbert and Louvois; several of good capacity, 

such as Seignelay and Torcy ; others incompetent, like Chamillard ; Absolurism 

he remained as much master of the administrators of the first rank xiv 

as if they had been insignificant clerks ; the home government of 

France, from 1661 to 1715, is summed up in the king's relations 

with his ministers. 

It was their genius which made the fortunes and the power of 
Louis XIV.'s two great ministers, Colbert and Louvois. On the 
faith of Cardinal Mazarin, the king knew the worth of Colbert. Colbert. 
" I had all possible confidence in him," says he, " because I knew 
that he had a great deal of application, intelligence and probity." 
Kough, reserved, taciturn, indefatigable in work, passionately 
devoted to the cause of order, public welfare and the peaceable 
aggrandisement of France, Colbert, on becoming the comptroller of 
finance in 1661, brought to the service of the State superior views, 
consummate experience and indomitable perseverance. The position 
of affairs required no fewer virtues. "Disorder reigned everywhere," 
says the king ; ** on casting over the various portions of my king- 



400 -■ History of France, 

dom not eyes of indifiPerence but the eyes of a master, I was sensibly 
affected not to see a single one which did not deserve and did not 
press to be taken in hand. The destitution of the lower orders 
"was extreme, and the finances, which give movement and activity 
to all this great framework of the monarchy, were entirely exhausted, 
and in such plight that there was scarcely any resource to be seen ; 
the affluent, to be seen only amongst official people, on the one hand 
cloaked all their malversations by divers kinds of artifices, and 
uncloaked them on the other, by their insolent and audacious 
extravagance, as if they were afraid to have me in ignorance of 
them." 

The punishment of the tax-collectors (traitants), prosecuted at 
the same time as superintendent Foiiquet, the arbitrary redemption 
g? ^ °^ re?^fe^> (annuities) on the city of Paris or on certain branches of 
the taxes, did not suffice to alleviate the extreme suffering of the 
people. The talliages from Avhich the nobility and the clergy were 
nearly everywhere exempt, pressed upon the people with the most 
cruel inequality. Colbert proposed to the king to remit the arrears 
of that tax, and devoted all his efforts to reducing them, whilst 
regulating its collection. His desire was to arrive at the establish- 
ment everywhere of real talliages, on landed property, &c., instead 
oi personal talliages, variable imposts, depending upon the supposed 
means of social position of the inhabitants. He was only very 
partially successful, without, however, allowing himself to be 
repelled by the difficulties presented by differences of legislation 
and customs in the provinces. He died without having completed 
his work ; but the talliages had been reduced by eight millions 
of livres, within the first two years of his administration. 

Peace was of short duration in the reign of Louis XIY., and 

often so precarious that it did not permit disarmament. At the 

very period when the able minister was trying to make the people 

feel the importance of the diminution in the talliages, he wrote to 

Colbert re- the king :" I merely entreat jour Majesty to permit me to say 

mpnstrates ti-j^t in war as well as in peace you have never consulted your 

king. finances for the purpose of determining your expenditure, which is 

a thing so extraordinary that assuredly there is no example thereof. 

For the past twenty years during which I have had the honour of 

serving your Majesty, though the receipts have greatly increased, 

you would find that the expenses have much exceeded the receipts, 

which might perhaps induce you to moderate and retrench such as 

are excessive." Louis XIV. did not "moderate or retrench his 

expenses," Colbert laboured to increase the receipts; the new 

imposts excited insurrections in Angoumois, in Guyenne, in Brittany, 



Taxation and Conwierce. 401 

and, although they cost so much sufFerii)g and severity, brought in bnt 
2,500,000 livres at Colbert's death. The indirect taxes, which were Farming 
at that time called fermes generales (farmings-general), amounted taxes, 
to 37,000,000 during the first two years of Colbert's administration, 
and rose to 64,000,000 at the time of his death." ^ "I should be 
apprehensive of going too far and that the prodigious augmen- 
tations of the fermes (farmings) would be very burdensome to the 
p6ople," wrote Louis XIV. in 1680. The expenses of recovering 
the taxes, which had but lately led to great abuses, were diminished 
by half. " The bailiffs generally, and especially those who are set 
over the recovery of talliages, are such terrible brutes that, by way 
of exterminating a good number of them, you could not do anything 
more worthy of yon than suppress those," wrote Colbert to the 
criminal-magistrate of Orleans. The puissance of the provincial 
governors, already ciirtailed by Eichelieu, suffered from fresh attacks 
under Louis XIV. Everywhere the power passed into the hands 
of the superintendents, themselves subjected in their turn to 
inspection by the masters of requests. " Acting on the infor- 
mation I had that in many provinces the people were plagued by 
certain folks, who abused their title of governors in order to make 
unjust requisitions," says the king in his Memoires, " I posted 
men in all quarters for the express purpose of keeping myself more 
surely informed of such exactions, in order to punish them as they 
deserved." Order was restored in all parts of France. 

" A useless banquet at a cost of a thousand crowns causes me 
incredible pain," said Colbert to Louis XIV., "and yet when it is a 
question of millions of gold for Poland, I would sell all my property, 
I would pawn my wife and children and I would go a-foot all my 
life to provide for it if necessary." Colbert knew how to " throw Manufac- 
millions about " when it was for endowing France with new manu- tares, 
factures and industries. " One of the most important works of 
peace," he used to say, "is the re-establishment of every kind of 
trade in this kingdom and to put it in a position to do without 
having resource to foreigners for the things necessary for the use 
and comfort of the subjects." " We have no need of anybody and 
our neighbours have need of us ; " such was the maxim laid down 
in a document of that date, which has often been attributed to 
Colbert, and which he certainly put incessantly into practice. The 
cloth manufactures were dying out, they received encouragement j 
a protestant Hollander, Van Eobais, attracted over to Abbeville by 

' See at the end of tliis chapter, table 1, Colbert's Budget for the year 
1662. 

D D 



403 



History of France. 



Itoads and 
canals. 



Colbert, there introduced the making of fine cloths ; at Beanvais 
and in the Gohelins establishment at Paris, under the direction of 
the great painter, Lebrun, the French tapestries soon threw into 
the shade the reputation of the tapestries of Flanders ; Venice had 
to yield up her secrets and her workmen for the glass manufactories 
of St. Gobain and Tourlaville. The bad state of the roads " was 
a dreadful hindrance to traffic ; " Colbert ordered them to be every- 
where improved. " The superintendents have done wonders, and 
we are never tired of singing their praises," writes Madame de 
Sevigne to her daughter during one of her trips ; " it is quite extra- 
ordinary what beautiful roads there are ; there is not a single 
moment's stoppage ; there are malls and walks everywhere." The 
magnificent canal of Languedoc, due to the generous initiative of 
Eiquet, united the Ocean to the Mediterranean ; the canal of Orleans 
completed the canal of Briare, commenced by Henry IV. The 
inland custom-houses, which shackled the traffic between province 
and province, were suppressed at divers points ; many provinces 
demurred to the admission of this innovation, declaring that, to set 
their affairs right, "there was need of nothing but order, order, order." 
Colbert also wanted order, but his views were higher and broader 
than those of Breton or Gascon merchants ; in spite of his desire 
to " put the kingdom in a position to do without having recourse 
to foreigners for things necessary for the use and comfort of the 
French," he had too lofty and too judicious a mind to neglect the 
extension of trade ; like Eichelieu, he was for founding great 
trading companies ; he had five, for the East and West Indies, 
the Levant, the North, and Africa ; his efforts were not useless ; at 
his death, the maritime trade of France had developed itself, and 
French merchants were eflfectuallj'' protected at sea by ships of war. 
In 1692, the royal navy numbered a hundred and eighty-six vessels; 
a hundred and sixty thousand sailors were down on the books ; the 
works at the ports of Toulon, Brest, and Eochefort, were in full 
activity ; Louis XIV. was in a position to refuse the salute of the 
flag, which the English had up to that time exacted in the Channel 
from all nations. 

So many and such sustained efforts in all directions, so many 
vast projects and of so great promise suited the mind of Louis XIV. 
as well as that of his minister. Louis XIV. was the victim of 
three passions which hampered and in the long-run destroyed the 
accord between king and minister : '^z!^ for Avar, whetted and 
indulged by Louvois ; that for kingly and courtly extravagance ; 
and that for building and costly fancies. Colbert likewise loved 
" buildments " (Zes hdtiments), as the phrase then was ; he urged 



Death of Colbert. 403 

the ting to complete the Louvre, plans for which, were requested of 
Bernini, who went to Paris for the purpose ; after two years' 
useless feelers and compliments, the Italian returned to Eome, and 
the wort was entrusted to Perrault, whose plan for the beautiful 
colonnade stUl existing had always pleased Colbert. The comple- 
tion of the castle of St. Germain, the works at Fontainebleau and 
at Chambord, the triumphal arches of St. Denis and St. Martin, 
the laying out of the Tuileries, the construction of the Observatory, 
and even that of the Palais des Invalides, which was Louvois's idea, 
found the comptroller of the finances well disposed if not eager. 
Versailles was a constant source of vexation to him. " For my 
part, I confess to your Majesty that, notwithstanding the repug- /j„gv 
nance you feel to increase the cash-orders \comijtants\ if I could orders, 
have foreseen that this expenditure would be so large, T should have 
advised the employment of cash-orders, in order to hide the know- 
ledge thereof for ever." [The cash-orders (ordonnances au comp- 
tant) did not indicate their object and were not revised. The king 
merely wrote: Pay cash: I know the object of this expenditure 
[Bon au comptant: je sais Vohjet de cette depense).'] 

Colbert was mistaken in his fears for Louis XIV. 's glory; if the 
expenses of Versailles surpassed his most gloomy apprehensions, 
the palace which rose upon the site of Louis XIV. 's former hunting 
box was worthy of the king who had made it in his own image 
and who managed to retain all his court around him there ; he died, 
however, before Versailles was completed ; at sixty-four years of 
age Colbert succumbed to excess of labour and of cares. That a.D. 1683. 
man, so cold and reserved, whom Madame de Sevigne called North, Death of 
and Guy-Patin the Man of Marble ( Vir Marmoreus), felt that (^^J^ q\ 
disgust for the things of life which appears so strikingly in the 
seventeenth century amongst those who were most ardently engaged 
in the affairs of the world. He was suffering from stone ; the king 
sent to inquire after him and wrote to him. The dying man had 
his eyes closed ; he did not open them : " I do not want to hear 
anything more about him," said he, when the king's letter was 
brought to him: " now, at any rate, let him leave me alone." His 
thoughts were occupied with his soul's salvation. Madame de 
Maintenon used to accuse him of always thinking about his finances 
and very little about religion. He repeated bitterly, as the dying 
Cardinal Wolsey had previousl}'- said in the case of Henry : " If I 
had done for God what I have done for that man, I had been saved 
twice over ; and now I know not what will become of me." He 
expired on the 6th of September, 1683. 

Louvois remained henceforth alone, without rival and without Lonvois. 

D D 2 



404 History of Finance. 

check. The work he had undertaken for the reorganization of the 
army was pretty nearly completed ; he had concentrated in his own 
hands the whole direction of the military service, the burthen and 
the honour of which were both borne by him. He had subjected 
to the same rules and the same discipline all corps and all grades ; 
the general as well as the colonel obeyed him blindly. M. de 
Turenne alone had managed to escape from the administrative 
level. Order reigned in the army, and supplies were regular. 
Louvois received the nickname of great Victualler {yivrier). The 
wounded were tended in hospitals devoted to their use. " When 
a soldier is once down, he never gets up again," had but lately been 
the saying. " Had I been at my mother's, in her own house, I could 
not have been better treated," wrote M. D'AUigny on the contrary, 
when he came out of one of the hospitals created by Louvois. He 
conceived the grand idea of the Hotel des Invalides. I^ever had 
the officers of the army been under such strict and minute super- 
vision; promotion went by seniority, by "the order on the list," as 
the phrase then was, without any favour for rank or birth ; com 
Reforms in manders were obliged to attend to their corps. Education in the 
tae army, scj^ools for cadets, regularity in service, obligation to keep the com- 
panies full instead of pocketing a portion of the pay in the name 
of imaginary soldiers who appeared only on the registers and who 
were called dummies [passe-volants^, the necessity of wearing uni- 
form, introduced into the army customs to which the French 
nobility, as undisciplined as they were brave, had hitherto been 
utter strangers.^ 

Artillery and engineering were developed under the influence of 
Vauban, " the first of his own time and one of the first of all 
times " in the great art of besieging, fortifying and defending 
places. Louvois had singled out Yauban at the sieges of Lille, 
Tournay and Douai, which he had directed in chief under the king's 
Vauban. own eye. The honesty and moral worth of Yauban equalled his 
genius ; he was as high-minded as he was modest ; evil reports 
had been spread about concerning the contractors for the fortifica- 
tions of Lille ; Yauban demanded an inquiry : " You are quite 
right in thinking, my lord," he wrote to Louvois to whom he was 
united by a sincere and faithful friendship, " that, if you do not 
examine into this affair, you cannot do me justice, and, if you do 
it me not, that would be compelling me to seek means of doing it 
myself and of giving up for ever fortification and all its con- 
comitants. Examine, then, boldly and severely ; away with all 

* See at the end of the chapter, table No. 2, Cfironological History of the 
French Army. 



Vaiiban a reformer. 405 

tender feeling, for I dare plainly tell you that in a question of 
strictest honesty and sincere fidelity I fear neither the king, nor 
you, nor all the human race together, Fortune had me born the 
poorest gentleman in France, but in requital she honoured me with 
an honest heart, so free from all sorts of swindles that it cannot 
bear even the thought of them without a shudder." It was not 
until eight years after the death of Louvois, in 1699, when Vauban 
had directed fifty-three sieges, constructed the fortifications of 
thirty-three places, and repaired those of three hundred towns, 
that he was made a marshal, an honour that no engineer had yet 
obtained; "The king fancied he was giving himself the baton," it 
was said, " so often had he had Yauban under his orders in 
besieging places." 

The leisure of peace was more propitious to Yauban's fame than 
to his favour. Generous and sincere as he was, a patriot more far- 
sighted than his contemporaries, he had the courage to present to 
the king a memorial advising the recall of the fugitive huguenots 
and the renewal, pure and simple, of the edict of Nantes. He had 
just directed the siege of Brisach and the defence of Dunkerque 
when he published a great economical work entitled la Dime royale, His "Dime 
the fruit of the reflections of his whole life, fully depicting the royale." 
misery of the people and the system of imposts he thought adapted 
to relieve it. The king was offended ; he gave the marshal a cold 
reception and had the work seized. Yauban received his death-blow 
from this disgrace: the royal edict was dated March 19, 1707: 
the great engineer died on the 30th 3 he was not quite seventy-four. 
The king testified no regret for the loss of so illustrious a servant, 
with whom he had lived on terms of close intimacy. Yauban had 
appeared to impugn his supreme authority ; this was one of the 
crimes that Louis XIY. never forgave. 

On the 16th July, 1691, death suddenly removed the minister 

Louvois, fallen in royal favour, detested and dreaded in France, 

universally hated in Europe, leaving, however, the king, France and 

Europe with the feeling that a great power had fallen, a great deal 

of merit disappeared, " I doubt not," wrote Louis XIY. to Mar- ^ liT f 

shal Boufflers, " that, as you are very zealous for my service, you Louvois 

will be sorry for the death of a man who served me well." " Lou- {^'^■^7 16). 

vols," said the marquis of La Fare, " should never have been bom 

or should have lived longer." The public feeling was expressed in 

an anonymous epitaph : — • 

" Here lieth he wlio to his will 
Bent everjone, knew everything: 
Louvois, beloved by no one, still 
Leaves everybody sorrowing." 



4o6 



History of France. 



Desmarets 

and 
Voysin. 



The king felt his loss, but did not regret the minister whose 
tyranny and violence were beginning to be oppressive to him : he 
felt himself to be more than ever master in the presence of the 
young or inexperienced men to whom he henceforth entrusted his 
afiairs. Louvois's son, Barbezieux, had the reversion of the war- 
department; Pontchartrain, who had been comptroller of finance 
ever since the retirement of Lepelletier, had been appointed to the 
navy in 1690 at the death of Seignelay. "M. de Pontchartrain 
had begged the king not to give him the navy," says Dangeau 
ingenuously, "because he knew nothing at all about it, but the 
king's will was absolute that he should take it. He now has all 
that M. de Colbert had, except the buildments." What mattered 
the inexperience of ministers? The king thought that he alone 
sufficed for all. 

God had left it to time to undeceive the all-powerful monarch ; 
he alone held out amidst the ruins : after the fathers the sons were 
falling around him, Seignelay had followed Colbert to the tomb ; 
Louvois was dead after Michael Le Tellier ; Barbezieux died in his 
turn in 1701. Then came the age of mediocrity in the cabinet as 
well as on the field ; Chamillard was the first, the only one of his 
ministers whom the king had ever loved. " His capacity was nil," 
says St. Simon, who had very friendly feelings towards Chamillard, 
"and he believed that he knew everything and of every sort"; the 
court bore with him because he was easy and good-natured, but the 
aff'airs of the State were imperilled in his hands; Pontchartrain had 
already had recourse to the most objectionable proceedings in order 
to obtain money : the mental resources of Colbert himself had failed 
in presence of financial embarrassments and increasing estimates. 
Trade was languishing, the manufactures founded by Colbert were 
dropping away one after another ; the revocation of the edict of 
l^antes and the emigration of Protestants had drained France of the 
most industrious and most skilful workmen ; many of the reformers 
had carried away a great deal of capital ; the roads, everywhere 
neglected, were becoming impracticable. The soldiers were without 
victuals, the officers were not paid, the abuses but lately put down 
by the strong hand of Colbert and Louvois were cropping up again 
in all directions ; the king at last determined to listen to the general 
cry and dismiss Chamillard. 

Desmarets in the finance and Voysin in the war department, 
both superintendents of finance, the former a nephew of Colbert's 
and initiated into business by his uncle, both of them capable and 
assiduous, succumbed, like their predecessors, beneath the weight' 
of the burthens which were overwhelming and ruining Prance. "I 



Mistakes of L outs XI V. 407 

know the state of my finainjes," Louis XIY. had said to Desmarets, 
" I do not ask you to do impossibilities ; if you succeed, you will 
render me a great service : if you are not successful, I shall not 
hold you to blame for circumstances.'' Desmarets succeeded better 
than could have been expected without being able to rehabilitate 
the finances of the State, Pontchartrain had exhausted the resource 
of creating new offices. ** Every time your Majesty creates a new 
post, a fool is found to buy it," he had said to the king. Desmarets 
had recourse to the bankers ; and the king seconded him by the 
gracious favour with which he received at "Versailles the greatest of 
the collectors {traitants), Samuel Bernard. " By this means every- 
thing was provided for up to the time of the general peace," says ... , 
M. d'Argenson. France kept up the contest to the end. When France at 
the treaty of Utrecht was signed, the fleet was ruined and destroyed, *f ^r^^^^®^. 
the trade diminished by two thirds, the colonies lost or devastated 
by the war, the destitution in the country so frightful that orders 
bad to be given to sow seed in the fields ; the exportation of grain 
was forbidden on pain of death ; meanwhile the peasantry were 
reduced to browse uj)on the grass in the roads and to tear the bark 
off the trees and eat it. Thirty years had rolled by since the death 
of Colbert, twenty-two since that of Louvois ; everything was going 
to perdition simultaneously ; reversps in war and distress at home 
were uniting to overwhelm the aged king, alone upstanding amidst 
so many dead and so much ruin. " Fifty years' sway and glory had 
inspired Louis XIV. with the presumptuous belief that he could 
not only choose his ministers well but also instruct them and teach 
them their craft," says M. d'Argenson. His mistake was to think 
that the title of king supplied all the endowments of nature or 
experience ; he was no financier, no soldier, no administrator, yet 
he would everywhere and always remain supreme master ; he had 
helieved that it was he who governed with Colbert and Louvois ; 
those two great ministers had scarcely been equal to the task 
imposed upon them by war and peace, by armies, buildments and 
royal extravagance ; their successors gave way thereunder and illu- 
sions vanished; the king's hand was powerless to sustain the weight 
of affairs becoming more and more disastrous ; the gloom that per- 
vaded the later years of Louis XIV.'s reign veiled from his people's 
eyes the splendour of that reign which had so long been brilliant 
and prosperous, though always lying heavy on the nation, even 
when they forgot their sufferings in the intoxication of glory and 
success. 

Lidependently of simple submission to the Catholic Church, there iteligious 
were three great tendencies which divided serious minds amongst questions. 



4o8 



History of France. 



Three dif- 
ferent 
views of 
religion. 



Louis XIV. 
violates 
the rights 
of con. 
science. 



The Fro. 
testants. 



them during the reign of Louis XIV.; three nohle passions held 
possession of pious souls ; liberty, faith, and love were, respectively, 
the groundwork as well as the hanner of Protestantism, Jansenism, 
and Quietism. It was in the name of the fundamental and innate 
liberty of the soul, its personal responsibility and its direct relations 
Avith God, that the Reformation had sprung up and reached growth 
in France, even more than in Germany and in England. M. de St. 
Cyran, the head and founder of Jansenism, abandoned the human 
soul unreservedly to the supreme will of God ; his faith soared 
triumphant over flesh and blood, and his disciples, disdaining the 
joys and the ties of earth, lived only for eternity. Madame Guyon 
and Fenelon, less ardent and less austere, discovered in the tender 
mysticism of 'pure love that secret of God's which is sought by aU 
pious souls ; in the name of divine love, the Quietists renounced all 
will of their own, just as the Jansenists in the name of faith. 

Louis XIV. on one occasion had solemnly promised that he would 
respect the rights of conscience ; but from the very beginning of 
his personal government he plainly showed that he did not mean to 
keep his word ; and after an interval of twenty years, the series of 
arbitrary measures which he countenanced and even ordered were 
replaced by open and avowed persecution. To begin with the 
Huguenots ; all the guarantees stipulated by the edict of Nantes 
were successively withdrawn, the mixed chambers established in 
the parliaments of Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux were sup- 
pressed, and • no protestant could enter any one of the liberal pro- 
fessions or practise as physician, lawyer, publisher, printer, etc. 
Thus debarred from the pursuit of these occupations, the persecuted 
Calvinists had nothing left open to them but trade and industry, 
and in a short time the whole commerce of the kingdom was in 
their hands. Eoman Catholics were prohibited from embracing 
Calvinism under penalty of hard labour at the hulks for life ; and 
children of protestant parents were, on the contrary, authorized to 
abjure their faith as early as the age of seven years, " age auquel," 
says the edict, " ils sont capables de raison et de choix dans une 
matiere aussi importante qui ceUe de leur salut." By virtue of this 
declaration, a great number of children were torn from the bosom 
of their family ; and Madame de Maintenon founded the convent 
of Saint-Cyr, near Versailles, for the reception of young ladies of 
noble origin, thus converted Missions were multiplied throughout 
the provinces, consciences were bought according to a certain tariff, 
and Pellisson, who, like the new favourite, had been originally a 
protestant, received the direction of a special fund organized to pay 
these shameful abjurations. " The average standard was not very 



Persecution of the Protestants. 409 

higli ; a soul was paid for at the rate of six livres a piece, a little 
less than the price of a porker. ' Send in, send in,' Ptsllisson wrote 
to them, ' you demand money, here it is ! five, ten, fifteen, twenty 
thousand livres !' and every quarter he displayed before the eyes 
of the monarch these scandalous bargains. It was pleasantly 
remarked at court, that the golden doctrine of M. Pellisson was 
much more convincing than that of Monsieur de Meaux. The pro- 
testants called his coffers the box of Pandora, whilst he himself 
compared them to the cruse of the widow of Sarepta." Louvois 
had recourse to means still more persuasive ; he sent soldiers to take 
up their quarters in the houses of the protestants. " Troops of all 
arms were employed in this military mission. But the dragoons ^^q « Dra- 
owed to the excess of their brutal zeal, or to the dazzling splendour gonnades." 
of their uniforms, by which they were distinguished above all the 
other corps, the honour of giving it their name. On the eve of 
their arrival in a town, the civil and ecclesiastical authorities assem- 
bled the Protestants in the market place, to whom, in an address 
which was generally wound up with a threatening announcement 
that the military force was approaching, they signified the irrevo- 
cable will of the king. Sometimes the poor frightened people at once 
declared themselves converts by general acclamation. The people 
of education signed a profession of faith, whilgt the common people 
only said, * I re-unite myself,' or cried out ' Ave Maria,' or made 
the sign of the cross. In some towns, offices of conversion were 
established, where the proselytes, after having their names registered 
on a list, received a certificate written on the hack of a playing card, 
which was to protect them from the persecution of the soldiery. 
The people of I^ismes, using an apocalyptic phrase, called this card 
the mark of the beast ; and, indeed, they only announced a pro- 
found truth ; for what is a man worth who, to preserve what is 
animal and mortal in him, gives up his spiritual being — his soul, 
the heavenly and immortal part of his nature V 

At last the fatal blow was struck. The king assembled his council : ^ j) jggg 
the lists of converts were so long that there could scarcely remain in Revocatioa 
the kingdom more than a few thousand recalcitrants. " His Majesty of the Edict 
proposed to take an ultimate resolution as regarded the Edict of 
Nantes," writes the duke of Bui'gundy in a memorandum found 
amongst his papers : " Monseigneur represented that, according to an 
anonymous letter he had received the day before, the huguenots had 
some expectation of what was coming upon them, that there was per- 
haps some reason to fear that they Avould take up arms, relying upon ^ 
the protection of the princes of their religion, and that, supposing they 
dared not do so, a great number would leave the kingdom, which 



410 



History of France. 



lier and 

Chateau- 

ueof. 



would te injurious to commerce and agriculture and, for that same 
reason, would weaken the State. The king replied that he had 
foreseen all for some time past and had provided for all ; that 
nothing in the world would he more painful to him than to shed 
a single drop of the hlood of his subjects, but that he had armies 
and good generals whom he would employ in case of need against 
rebels who courted their own destruction. As for calculations 
of interest, he thought them worthy of but little consideration in 
comparison with the advantages of a measure which would restore 
to religion its splendour, to the State its tranquillity and to authority 
all its rights. A resolution was carried unanimously for the sup- 
It is siened Pi'sssion of the Edict of Nantes." The declaration, drawn up by 
by Le Tel- Chancellor Le Tellier and Chateauneuf, was signed by the king on 
the 15th of October, 1685 ; it was despatched on the 17th to all 
the superintendents. The edict of pacification, that great work of 
the liberal and prudent genius of Henry IV., respected and con- 
firmed in its most important particulars by Cardinal Richelieu, 
recognized over and over again by Louis XIV. himself, disappeared 
at a single stroke, carrying with it all hope of liberty, repose and 
justice for fifteen hundred thousand subjects of the king. " Our 
pains," said the preamble of the Edict, "have had the end we had 
proposed, seeing that the better and the greater part of our subjects 
of the religion styled reformed have embraced the catholic ; the 
execution of the Edict of Nantes consequently remaining useless, 
we have considered that we could not do better, for the purpose of 
effacing entirely the memory of the evils which this false religion 
has caused in our kingdom, than revoke entirely the aforesaid 
Edict of Nantes and all that has been done in favour of the said 
religion." 

The Edict of October 15, 1685, supposed the religion styled 
reformed to be already destroyed and abolished. It ordered the 
demolition of all the chapels that remained standing and interdicted 
any assembly or worship : recalcitrant (ppiniatres) ministers were 
ordered to leave the kingdom within fifteen days ; the schools were 
closed ; all new-born babies were to be baptised by the parish- 
priests ; religionists were forbidden to leave the kingdom on pain 
of the galleys for the men and confiscation of person and property 
for the women. "The will of the king," said Superintendent 
Marillac at Eouen, "is that there be no more than one religion in 
this kingdom ; it is for the glory of God and the well-being of the 
State." Two hours were allowed the reformers of Eouen for 
making their abjuration. 

One clause, at the end of the edict of October 15, seemed to 



Its ex- 
treme 
severity 



The revocation of the Edict is useless. 4I I 

extenuate its eflPect; "Those of oar subjects of the religion ' styled 

reformed who shall persist in their errors, pending the time when 

it may please God to enlighten them like the rest, shall be allowed 

to remain in the kingdom, country and lands which obey the king, 

there to continue their trade and enjoy their property withoi t being 

liable to be vexed or hindered on pretext of prayer or worship of 

the said religion of whatsoever nature they may be." " Never was 

there illusion more cruel than that which this clause caused people," 

says Benoit in his Histoire de VlEdit de Nantes : " it was believed 

that the king meant only to forbid special exercises, but that he Miscalcu- 

intended to leave conscience free, since he granted this grace to all lations as 

. . . to the re- 

those who were still reformers, pending the time when it should guitsof the 

please God to enlighten them. Many gave up the measures they measure, 
had taken for leaving the country with their families, many 
voluntarily returned from the retreats where they had hitherto been 
fortunate enough to lie hid. The most mistrustful dared not 
suppose that so solemn a promise was only made to be broken on 
the morrow. They were all, nevertheless, mistaken ; and those who 
were imprudent enough to return to their homes were only just in 
time to receive the dragoons there." A letter from Louvois to the 
duke of I^oailles put a stop to all illusion. " I have no doubt," 
he wrote, " that some rather heavy billets upon the few amongst 
the nobility and third estate still remaining of the religionists will 
undeceive them as to the mistake they are under about the Edict 
M. de Chateauneuf drew up for us : his Majesty desires that you 
should explain yourself very sternly and that extreme severity 
should be employed against those who are not willing to become of 
his religion; those who have the silly vanity to glory in holding 
out to the last must be driven to extremity." The pride of 
Louis XIY. was engaged in the struggle ; those of his subjects who 
refused to sacrifice their religion to him were disobedient, rebellious 
and besotted with silly vanity. " It will be quite ridiculous before 
long to be of that religion," wrote Madame de Maintenon. 

Even in his court and amongst his most useful servants the king Opposition. 
encountered unexpected opposition. Marshal Schomberg with 
great difficulty obtained authority to leave the kingdom ; Duquesne 
was refused. All ports were closed, all frontiers watched. The 
great lords gave way, one after another ; accustomed to enjoy royal 
favours, attaching to them excessive value, living at court, close to 
Paris which was spared a great deal during the persecution, they, 
without much effort, renounced a faith which closed to them hence- 
forth the door to all offices and all honours. The gentlemen of the 
provinces were more resolute ; many realized as much as they could 



412 



History of France. 



of their property and went abroad, "braving all langers, even that 
of the galleys in case of arrest. It were impossible to estimate 
precisely the number of emigrations; it was probably between 
Trade three and four hundred thousand. Almost all trade was stopped 

ruined. in I^ormandy. The little amount of manufacture that was possible 
rotted away on the spot for want of transport to foreign countries, 
whence vessels were no longer found to come ; Eouen, Darnetal, 
Elbeuf, Louviers, Caudebec, Le Havre, Pont-Audemer, Caen, 
St. L6, Alen^on and Bayeux were falling into decay, the different 
branches of trade and industry which had but lately been seen 
flourishing there having perished through the emigration of the 
masters whom their skilled workmen followed in shoals. The 
JSTorman emigration had been very numerous, thanks to the extent 
of its coasts and to the habitual communication between J^ormandy, 
England and Holland ; Vauban, however, remained very far from 
the truth when he deplored, in 1688, "the desertion of 100,000 
men, the withdrawal from the kingdom of sixty millions of livres, 
the enemy's fleets swelled by 9000 sailors, the best in the kingdom, 
and the enemy's armies by 600 officers and 12,000 soldiers, who 
had seen service." It is a natural but a striking fact that the 
reformers who left France and were received with open arms in 
Brandenburg, Holland, England and Switzerland carried 'in their 
hearts a profound hatred for the king who drove them away from 
their country and everywhere took service against him, whilst the 
Protestants who remained in France, bound to the soil by a thou- 
sand indissoluble ties, continued at the same time to be submissive 
and faithful. 

The peace of Ryswick had not brought the Protestants the hoped 
for alleviation of their woes. Louis XIV. haughtily rejected the 
petition of the English and Dutch plenipotentiaries on behalf of 
"those in affliction who ought to have their share in the happiness 
Insurrec- ^^ Europe." The persecution everywhere continued, with deter- 
tion in the mination and legality in the I^orth, with violence and passion in 
evennes. ^^^ South, abandoned to the tyranny of M. de Lamoignon de 
Baville, a crafty and coldbloodedly cruel politician, without the 
excuse of any zealous religious conviction. The execution of 
several ministers who had remained in hiding in the Cevennes or 
had returned from exile to instruct and comfort their flocks raised 
to the highest pitch the enthusiasm of the reformers of Languedoc. 
Deprived of their highly prized assemblies and of their pastors' 
guidance, men and women, greybeards and children, all at once 
fancied themselves animated by the spirit of prophecy. Young 
girls had celestial visions ; tlie little peasant-lasses poured out their 



Civil war in Southern France. 413 

utterances in French, sometimes in the language and with the 
sublime eloquence of the Bible, sole source of their religious 
knowledge; the rumour of these marvels ran from village to 
village; meetings were held to hear the inspired maidens, in 
contempt of edicts, the galleys and the stake ; a gentleman glass- 
worker, named Abraham de la Serre, was as it were the Samuel of 
this new school of prophets. In vain did M. de B^ville have three 
hundred children imprisoned at Uzes, and then send them to the 
galleys ; the religious contagion was too strong for the punishments ; 
" women found themselves in a single day husbandless, childless, 
houseless and penniless," says the historian Court : they remained 
immovable in their pious ecstasy ; the assemblies multiplied ; the 
troops which had so long occupied Languedoc had been summoned 
away by the war of succession in Spain, the militia could no longer 
restrain the reformers, growing every day more enthusiastic through 
the prophetic hopes which were born of their long sufferings. 

The insurrection of the Cevenols or, as the Catholic peasants 
called them, the Camisards, led by Jean Cavalier, Roland and The" Ca- 
others, was put down by marshal Yillars, after many vicissitudes of misards." 
successes and reverses. Little by little the chiefs were killed off 
in petty engagements or died in obscurity of their wounds ; pro- 
visions were becoming scarce ; the country was wasted ; submission 
became more frequent every day. The principals all demanded 
leave to quit Prance. " There are left none but a few brigands in 
the Upper Cevennes," says Yillars. Some partial risings alone 
recalled, up to 1709, the fact that the old leaven still existed ; the 
war of the Camisards was over. It was the sole attempt in his- 
tory on the part of French Protestantism since Eichelieu, a 
strange' and dangerous effort made by an ignorant and savage 
people, roused to enthusiasm by persecution, believing itself called 
upon by the spirit of God to win, sword in hand, the freedom of gTienots" 
its creed, under the leadership of two shepherd-soldiers and prophets, and tlie 
Only the Scottish Cameronians have presented the same mixture of Qameron- 
warlike ardour and pious enthusiasm, more gloomy and fierce with ians. 
the men of the Korth, more poetical and prophetical with the 
Cevenols, flowing in Scotland as in Languedoc from religious 
oppression and from constant reading of the Holy Scriptures. The 
silence of death succeeded everywhere in France to the plaints of 
the reformers and to the crash of arms ; Louis XIV. might well 
suppose that Protestantism in his dominions was dead. 

It was a little before the time when the last of the Camisards, 
Abraham Mazel and Claris, perished near Uzes (in 1710), that the 
king struck the last blow at Jansenism by destroying its earliest 



414 History of France. 

nest and its last refuge, tlie house of the nuns of Port-Eoyal des 
Champs. With truces and intervals of apparent repose, the struggle 
had lasted more than sixty years between the Jesuits and Jan- 
senism. M. de St. Cyran, who left the Bastille a few months after 
the death of Richelieu, had dedicated the last days of his life to 
writing against Protestantism, being so much the more scared by 
the heresy in that, perhaps, he felt himself attracted thereto by a 
Jansenism, secret affinity. He was already dying when there appeared the book 
Frequente Communion, by M. Arnauld, youngest son and twentieth 
child of that illustrious family of Arnaulds in whom Jansenism 
seemed to be personified. The author was immediately accused at 
Eome and buried himself for twenty years in retirement. With his 
dying breath M. de St. Cyran had said to M. Guerin, physician to 
the college of Jesuits : " Sir, tell your Fathers, when I ara dead, 
not to triumph, and that I leave behind me a dozen stronger than 
I." With all his penetration the director of consciences was mis- 
taken. M. Arnauld was a great theologian, an indefatigable con- 
troversialist, the oracle and guide of his friends in their struggle 
against the Jesuits ; M. de Sacy and M. Singlin were wise and able 
directors, as austere as M. de St. Cyran in their requirements, less 
domineering and less rough than he ; but M. de St. Cyran alone 
■was and could be the head of Jansenism ; he alone could have 
inspired that idea of immolation of the whole being to the sovereign 
■will of God, as to the truth which resides in Him alone. Once 
assured of this point, M. de St. Cyran became immovable. Mother 
Angelica -A.ngelica pressed him to appear before the archbishop's council, 
Arnauld. which was to pronounce upon his book Theologie familiere. " It 
is always 'good to humble oneself," she said. "As for you," he 
replied, " who are in that disposition and would not in any respect 
compromise the honour of the truth, you could do it ; but as for me 
I should break down before the eyes of God if I consented thereto j 
the weak are more to be feared sometimes than the wicked." 

Mother Angelica Arnauld, to whom these lines were addressed, 
■was the most perfect image and the most accomplished disciple of 
M. de St. Cyran. More gentle and more human than he, she was 
quite as strong and quite as zealous. A reformer of many a con- 
vent since the day when she had closed the gates of Port-Eoyal 
against her father, M. Arnauld, in order to restore the strictness of the 
cloister, Mother Angelica carried rule along with her, for she carried 
■within herself the government, rigid no doubt, for it was life in a 
convent, but characterized by generous largeness of heart, which 
caused the yoke to be easily borne. She carried the same zeal from 
convent to convent, from Port-Eoyal des Champs to Port-Eoyal 



yanseiims and the Arnaulds. 415 

de Paris; from Maubuisson, whither her superiors sent her to 
establish a reformation, to St. Sacrement, to establish union between 
the two orders ; ever devoted to religion, without having cliosen 
her vocation ; attracting around her all that were hers ; her mother 
a wife at twelve years of age, and astonished to find herself obeying 
after having commanded her twenty children for fifty years ] 
five of her sisters ; nieces and cousins ; and in " the Desert," 
beside Port-Eoyal des Champs, her brothers, her nephews, her 
friends, steeped like herself in penitence. 

Mother Angelica was nearing the repose of eternity, the only 
repose admitted by her brother M. Arnauld, when the storm of 
persecution burst upon the monastery. The Angustinus of Jan- , „ „ 
senius, bishop of Ypres, a friend of M. de St. Cyran's, had just gustinus." 
been condemned at Eome. Five propositions concerning grace were 
extracted from the book, and pronounced heretical. The opposers of 
what was called Jansenist doctrines employed every means in their 
power to have these propositions condemned by the court of Eome ; 
and having obtained to this effect two bulls from the Popes Inno- 
cent X. and Alexander YII., their next object was to secure the pro- 
mulgation of these documents in the dominions of the French king. 
An assembly of court-bishops drew up a declaration which was subse- 
quently made more valid still by the king's own signature, and which 
became obligatory on all ecclpsiastical persons throughout Prance. 
This declaration contained two points ; the former, to the effect that 
the five famous propositions on the subject of divine grace were to be 
found in Jansenius ; the latter maintained the heretical character of 
these propositions. Believing, as they did, that the five proposi- 
tions were, in substance, maintained by Jansenius, the solitaries of 
Port-Eoyal would have been guilty of an untruth had they sub- Discus- 
scribed to the Pope's declaration ; on the other hand, if they refused sion or the 
to sign, they were lost. In this dreadful situation, the thought of positions.'* 
a compromise struck the firmest minds. A negotiation was opened 
with the archbishop of Paris, for the purpose of endeavouring to 
obtain from him a pastoral letter conceived in moderate terms. 
Several meetings took place amongst the Jansenists, Pascal and 
Domat deciding against all compliance contrary to Christian truth 
and sincerity, whilst Nicole and Arnauld wrote in favour of condi- 
tional obedience. The latter prevailed ; the authority of Arnauld 
especially, carried along with it the votps of the majority. Port- 
Eoyal had breathed its last ! In the year 1709 the monastery was 
destroyed, and not even the sanctity of the grave was respected by 
the agents of Louis XIY. Dogs were seen disputing the mangled 
remains of bodies torn from what should have been their last rest- port-Royal 
ing place. destroyed. 



4i6 History of France. 

Success seemed at first to crown these deeds of violence, and the 
king for a short time thought that Jansenism had disappeared with 
Port-Royal des Champs. ISTevertheless the publication of the 
Q Reflexions sur le Nouveau Testament, by Quesnel, a priest of the 

and the congregation of the Oratory (1671) revived all the disputes, and 
bull "Uni- proved the vitality of the doctrines with which the name of Jan- 
senism had been connected. One hundred and one propositions 
extracted from the work were condemned at Eome by the bull 
Unigenitus, and Louis XIV., in 1712, bound the whole French 
clergy to adhere to that condemnation under penalty of disgrace, 
prison and exile. Quietism was proscribed quite as strictly as Jan- 
senism. It is well known, that a pious but mistaken lady, Madame 
Guyon, had endeavoured to spread a kind of mystical form of reli- 
gion introduced previously by a Spanish priest, Michael de Molinos, 
and condemned by Pope Innocent XI. Through the Duke de 
Beauvilliers this lady became acquainted with Fenelon. I^aturally 
inclined to the contemplative sort of piety which springs more from 
the heart than from the understanding, the prelate adopted Madame 
Madame Quyon's views, and a kind of sect was soon organized at court, of 
Quietism, which the dukes de Beauvilliers and de Chevreuse, Fenelon and 
Madame Guyon were the leaders. " We must," said the Quietists, 
" love God for his own sake ; our love must be pure and disin- 
terested, inspired neither by the hope of everlasting happiness, nor 
by the dread of everlasting condemnation." Madame de Maintenon, 
at first gained over likewise, had introduced Madame Guyon into 
the house of St. Cyr, and thus given a sort of sanction to the doc- 
trines of Molinos. The bishop of Chartres, in whose diocese the 
establishment was, soon perceived what the consequences would be 
of allowing an exalted, quintessentiated form of mysticism to spread 
through a community of young girls. He warned Madame de 
Maintenon ; and this lady accordingly desired that Madame Guyon's 
works and opinions should be examined by a committee composed 
of Bossuet, M. de Noailles, bishop of Chalons, and Tronson, superior 
of the ecclesiastical college of St. Sulpice, in Paris. Penelon had 
openly taken Madame Guyon's part : he was therefore quite as 
much on his trial as the fair disciple of Molinos ; but he expressly 
declared that he would abide by the decision of the examiners, 
especially that of Bossuet ; and, as a reward for his submission, 
Madame de Maintenon secured his nomination to the archbishopric 
of Cambrai. This appointment was a heavy blow for Fenelon's 
party ; the important diocese of Paris was just vacant, and they had 
confidently expected that their leader would be nominated to it. Such 
a position would have given him the greatest influence, and enabled 
him to propagate with absolute success Madame Guyon's doctrine. 



TJie Quietists. 417 

The disappointment was general ; and tlie countess de Guiche, 
amongst many others, is said to have been so mortified, that she 
could not conceal her tears. In order to secure by other means the 
authority which his nomination to the see of Cambrai could not 
give him, Fenelon courted the Jesuits, openly acknowledged hia 
sympathy for them, and did his utmost to conciliate men whose 
power at Versailles was then without control. 

The result of the conference held at Issy proved null ; Madame Fenelon 
Guy on persevered in promulgating the principles of Molinos, and sj^PPO'^ts 
Quietism seemed to spread more rapidly than ever. Exasperated at Guy on, 
Fenelon's questionable behaviour, and at the determination with ^'^^ is con. 
which he supported the condemned doctrines, after having promised 
to yield to the decision of the examiners, Bossuet prepared his 
celebrated InstriicHoiis sur les ^tats cCoraison. Fenelon, however, 
was ready beforehand ; he refused to approve the work of the 
Bishop of Meaux, and published in support of his opinions the 
well-known volume containing the maxims of the saints on the 
spiritual life. He managed so cleverly that his apology was ttie 
first to appear. The scandal became immense j it seemed necessary 
to institute an appeal to the Court of Eome. Madame Guyon 
Avas arrested, Fenelon exiled in his diocese, and the Pope requested 
to pronounce judgment in a case respecting which there could hardly 
be any difficulty. The archbishop of Cambrai was condemned, 
and whatever may have been his errors during the course of this 
affair, he redeemed them by the dignity with which he bore his 
disgrace. 

So many fires smouldering in the hearts, so many different strug- 
gles going on in the souls that sought to manifest their personal 
and independent life have often caused forgetfulness of the great 
mass of the faithful who were neither Jansenists nor Quietists. 
Bossuet was the real head and the pride of the great catholic Church Bossuet. 
of France in the seventeenth century ; what he approved of was 
approved of by the immense majority of the French clergy, what 
he condemned was condemned by them. Moderate and prudent in 
conduct as well as in his opinions, pious without being fervent, 
holding discreetly aloof from all excesses, he was a Galilean without 
fear and without estrangement as regarded the papal power to 
which he steadfastly paid homage. It was with pain and not 
without having sought to escape therefrom that he found himself 
obliged, at the assembly of the clergy in 1682, to draw up the 
solemn declarations of the Galilean Church. The meeting of the 
clergy had been called forth by the eternal discussions of the civil 
power with the court of Eome on the question of the rights of 

Q E 



4-1 8 History of France. 

regale, that is to say, the rights of the sovereign to receive the 

revenues of vacant bishoprics and to appoint to benefices belonging 

to them. The French bishops were of independent spirit ; the 

archbishop of Paris, Francis de Harlay, was on bad terms with 

Pope Innocent XI. ; Bossnet managed to moderate the discussions 

and kept within suitable bounds the declaration which he could not 

His theo- avoid. He had always taught and maintained what was proclaimed 

logical ijy ^I^Q assembly of the clergy of France, that *' St. Peter and his 
views. . <Dj 7 

successors, vicars of Jesus Christ, and the whole Church itself 

received from God authority over only spiritual matters and such 
as appertain to salvation, and not over temporal and civil matters, 
in such sort that kings and sovereigns are not subject to any eccle- 
siastical power, by order of God, in temporal matters, and cannot 
be deposed directly or indirectly by authority of the keys of the 
Church ; finally that, though the pope has the principal part in 
questions of faith, and though his decrees concern all the churches 
and each church severally, his judgment is, nevertheless, not irre- 
fragable, unless the consent of the Church intervene." Old doc- 
trines in the Church of France, but never before so solemnly 
declared and made incumbent upon the teaching of all the facul- 
ties of theology in the kingdom. 

Constantly occupied in the dogmatic struggle against Pro- 
testantism, Bossuet had imported into it a moderation in form 
which, however, did not keep out injustice. "Without any inclina- 
tion towards persecution, he, with almost unanimity on the part of 
the bishops of France, approved of the king's piety in the revoca- 
tion of the edict of N"antes. 

Bossuet had died on the 12th of AprU, 1704. The king was 
about to bring the Jansenist question before his bed of justice, 
_ . when he fell ill : "I am sorry to leave the affairs of the Church in 
throws the the state in which they are," he said to his councillors ; " I am 
responsi- perfectly ignorant in the matter; you know and I call you to 
Church witness that I have done nothing therein but what you wanted, and 
matters that I have done all you wanted ; it is you who will answer before 
vLers * " ^^^ -^^^ ^ ^^^'^ ^^® been done, whether too much or too little ; I 
charge you with it before Him, and I have a clear conscience ; I 
am but a know-nothing who have left myself to your guidance." 
An awful appeal from a dying king to the guides of his conscience ; 
he had dispeopled his kingdom, reduced to exile, despair or false- 
hood fifteen hundred thousand of his subjects, but the memory of 
the persecutions inflicted upon the Protestants did not trouble 
him ; they were, for him, rather a pledge of his salvation and of 
bis acceptance before God ; he was thinking of the catholic Church, 



Literature. — Pascal, 419 

the holy priests exiled or imprisoned, the nuns drlyen from their 
convent, the division among the bishops, the scandal amongst the 
faithful ; the great burthen of absolute power was evident to his 
eyes ; he sought to let it fall back upon the shoulders of those who 
had enticed him or urged him upon that fatal path. A vain 
attempt in the eyes of men, whatever may be the judgment of 
God's sovereign mercy ; history has left weighing upon Louis XIV. 
the crushing weight of the religious persecutions ordered under 
his reigii. 

It has been said in this history that Louis XIY. had the fortune literature, 
to find himself at the culminating point of absolute monarchy and 
to profit by the labours of his predecessors, reaping a portion of 
their glory ; he had likewise the honour of enriching himself with 
the labours of his contemporaries, and attracting to himself a share 
of their lustre ; the honour, be it said, not the fortune, for he 
managed to remain the centre of intellectual movement as well 
as of the court, of literature and art as well as affairs of State. 
Only the abrupt and solitary genius of Pascal, or the prankish and 
ingenuous geniality of La Fontaine held aloof from king and 
court ; Eacine and Moliere, Bossuet and Fenelon, La Bruyere and 
Boileau lived frequently in the circle of Louis XIV. and enjoyed in 
diff"erent degrees his favour ; M. de la Rochefoucauld and Madame 
de Sevigne were of the court ; Lebrun, Eigaud, Mignard painted 
for the king ; Perrault and Mansard constructed the Louvre and 
Versailles ; the learned of all countries considered it an honour to 
correspond with the new academies founded in France. Louis XIV. 
was even less a man of letters or an artist than an administrator 
or a soldier, but literature and art as well as the superintendents 
and the generals found in him the King, The puissant unity of 
the reign is everywhere the same. The king and the nation are 
in harmony. 

Pascal, had he been born later, would have remained indepen- pascaL 
dent and proud, from the nature of his mind and of his character, 
as well as from the connexion he had full early with Port-Eoyal, 
where they did not rear courtiers \ he died, however, at thirty-nine, 
in 1661, the very year in which Louis XIV. began to govern, 
Born at Clermont in Auvergne, educated at his father's and by 
his father, though it was not thought desirable to let him study 
mathematics, he had already discovered by himself the first thirty- 
two propositions of Euclid, when Cardinal Eichelieu, holding on 
his knee little Jacqueline Pascal and looking at her brother, said 
to M. Pascal, the two children's father, who had come to thank 
hioi for a favour, *' Take care of them ; I mean to make something 

B E 2 



420 



History of France. 



great of them." This was the native and powerful instinct of 
genius divining genius ; Richelieu, however, died three years later, 
without having done anything for the children who liad impressed 
him, beyond giving their father a share in the superintendence of 
Eouen ; he thus put them in the way of the great Corneille, who 
was affectionately kind to Jacqueline, hut took no particular notice 
of Blaise Pascal. The latter was seventeen ; he had already 
written his Traite des Coniques (Treatise on Conies) and begun to 
His mathe- occupy himself with **' his arithmetical machine," as bis sister, 
matical ]\Iadame Perier, calls it. At twenty-three he had ceased to apply 
bis mind to human sciences ; " when he afterwards discovered the 
roulette (cycloid), it was without thinking," says Madame Pevier, 
" and to distract his attention from a severe tooth-ache be bad." 
He was not twenty-four when anxiety for his salvation and for the 
glory of God had taken complete possession of his soul. It was to 
tbe same end that he composed the Lettres Provincial.es, the first 
of which was written in six days, and the style of which, clear, 
lively, precise, far removed from the somewhat solemn gravity of 
Port-Royal, formed French prose as Malherbe and Boileau formed 
the poetry. 

The Provincials could not satisfy for long tbe pious ardour of 
Pascal's soul ; be took in hand bis great work on tbe Verite de la 
religion, but, unfortunately, was unable to finish it. " God, who 
bad inspired my brother with this design and with all his tboughts," 
writes his sister, " did not permit him to bring it to its completion, 
for reasons to us unknown." A genius unique in the extent and 
variety of his faculties, which were applied with the same splendid 
results to mathematics and physics, to philosophy and polemics, 
disdaining all preconceived ideas, going unerringly and straight- 
forwardly to the bottom of things with admirable force and 
profundity, independent and free even in bis voluntary submission 
to tbe Christian faith, which he accepts with bis eyes open after 
having weighed it, measured it and sounded it to its uttermost 
depths, too steadfast and too simple not to bow his head before 
mysteries, all tbe while acknowledging bis ignorance. " If there 
were no darkness," says be, " man would not feel his corruption ; 
if there Avere no light, man would have no hope of remedy. Thu3, 
it is not only quite right but useful for us that God should be con- 
cealed in part, and revealed in part, since it is equally dangerous 
for man to know God without knowing bis own misery, and to 
know his own misery without knowing God." The lights of this 
great intellect had led him to acquiesce in bis own fogs : "One can be 
qxiite sure that there is a God, without knowing what He is," says he. 




BLAISE PASCAL. 



L iter at u re. — Bossuet. 42 1 

In 1627, four years after Pascal and, like him, in a family of Bossaet. 
the long robe, was born, at Dijon, his only rival in that great art 
of writing prose which established the superiority of the French 
language. At sixteen, Bossuet preached his first sermon in the 
drawing-room of Madame de EambouUlet, and the great Conde was 
pleased to attend his theological examinations. He was already 
famous at court as a preacher and a polemist when the king gave 
him the title of bishop of Condom, almost immediately inviting him 
to become preceptor to the Dauphin. 

Bossuet laboured conscientiously to instruct his little prince, 
studying for him and with him the classical authors, preparing 
grammatical expositions, and, lastly, writing for his edification the 
Traite de la Connaissance de Dieu et de soimeme {Treatise on the 
Knoioledge of God and of Self ), the Discours sur Vhistoire universelle 
{Discourse on Universal History), and the Politique tiree de 
V^criture sainte {Polity derived from Holy Writ). The labour His chief 
wa,s in vain ; the very loftiness of his genius, the extent and writings, 
profundity of his views rendered Bossuet unfit to get at the heart 
and mind of a boy who was -timid, idle and kept in fear by the 
king as well as by his governor. The Dauphin was nineteen when 
his marriage restored Bossuet to the Church and to the world ; the 
king appointed him almoner to the dauphiness and, before long, 
bishop of Meaux. 

The guidance of the bishop of Meaux, in fact, answered the 
requirements of spirits that were pious and earnest without enthu- 
siasm ; less ardent in faith and less absolute in religious practice Character 
than M. de St. Cyran and Port-Eoyal, less exacting in his demands of Ws^ 
than Pather Bourdaloue, susceptible now and then of mystic ideas, ^' 

as is proved by his letters to Sister Cornuau, he did not let himself 
be won by the vague ecstasies of absolute (pure) love ; he had a 
mind large enough to say, like Mother Angelica Arnauld : " I am 
of all saints' order and all saints are of my order ;" but his pre- 
ferences always inclined towards those saints and learned doctors 
who had not carried any religious tendency to excess and who had 
known how to rest content with the spirit of a rule and a faith 
that were practical. A wonderful genius, discovering by flashes 
and as if by instinct the most profound truths of human nature, and 
giving them expression in an incomparable style, forcing, straining 
the language to make it render his idea, darting at one bound to the 
sublimest height by xise of the simplest terms, which he, so to speak, 
bore away with him, wresting them from their natural and proper 
signification. " There, in spite of that great heart of hers, is that 
princess so admired and so beloved : there, such as Death has made 
her for us ! " Bossuet alone could speak like that. 



422 



History of France. 



He -was writing incessantly, all the while that he was preaching 
at Meanx and at Paris, making funeral orations over the queen, 
Maria Theresa, over the Princess Palatine, Micliael Le Tellier and 
the prince of Conde ; the edict of Nantes had just heen revoked ; 
controversy with the protestant ministers, headed by Claude and 
Jurieu, occupied a great space in the life of the bishop of Meaux j 
he at that time wrote his Histoire des variations, often unjust and 
violent, always able in its attacks upon the Reformation. 

Simultaneously with the controversial treatises, the Elevations 
sur les mj/stcres and the Meditations sur VEvangile were written at 
Works of Meaux, drawing the bishop away to the serener regions of supreme 
edification. f.^]^\^^ There might he have chanced to meet those reformers, as 
determined as he in the strife, as attached, at bottom, as he, for 
life and death, to the mysteries and to the lights of a common 
hope. ** When God shall give us grace to enter Paradise," 
St. Bernard used to say, " we shall be above all astonished at not 
finding some of those whom we had thought to meet there and at 
finding others whom we did not expect." Bocsuet had a moment's 
glimpse of this higher truth ; in concert with Leibnitz, a great 
intellect of more range in knowledge and less steadfastness than he 
in religious faith, he tried to reconcile the catholic and protestant 
communions in one and the same creed. There were insurmountable 
difficulties on both sides ; the attempt remained unsuccessful. 
Bossuet died at Paris on the 12th of April, 1704, just when the 
troubles of the Church were springing up again. Great was the 
consternation amongst the bishops of France, wont as they were to 
shape themselves by his counsels. " Men were astounded at this 
mortal's mortality." Bossuet was seventy-three. 
Bonrda- A month later, on the 13th of May, Father Bourdaloue in his 

loue. tnvn died : a model of close logic and moral austerity, with a stiff 

and manly eloquence, so impressed with the miserable insufficiency 
of human efforts, that he said as he was dying, " My God, I have 
wasted life, it is just that Thou recall it." There remained only 
Fenelon in the first rank, which Massillon did not as yet dispute 
_^ with him. Malebranche was living retired in his cell at the 

bianche. Oratory, seldom speaking, writing his fiecherches sur la verite 
(Researches into Truth), and his Entretiens sur la metaphysique 
(Discourses on Metaj)h]/sics), bolder in thought than he was aware 
of or wished, sincere and natural in his meditations as well as in 
Flechier. his style. In spite of Flechier's eloquence in certain iuneral 
orations, posterity has decided against the modesty of the arch- 
bishop of Cambrai, who said at the death of the bishop of Mmes, 
in 1710, "We have lost our master." In his retirement or his 
exile, after Bossuet's death, it was around Fenelon that was con- 




BOSSUET. 



Fenelon, 4213 

centrated all the lustre of tlie French episcopate, long since restored 

to tlie respect and admiration it deserved. 

Fenelon was born in Perigord, at the castle of Fenelon, on the 6th Fenelon. 
of August, I65I. Like Cardinal de Eetz he belonged to an ancient 
and noble house and was destined from his youth for the Church. 
Brought up at the seminary of St. Sulpice, lately founded by 
M. Olier, he for a short time conceived the idea of devoting himself 
to foreign missions ; his weak health and his family's opposition 
turned him ere long from his purpose, but the preaching of the 
gospel amongst the heathen continued to have for him an attraction 
which is perfectly depicted in one of the rare sermons of his which 
have been preserved. He had held himself modestly aloof, occupied 
with confirming new Catholics in their conversion or with preaching 
to the Protestants of Poitou; he had written nothing but his 
Traite de V education des filles, intended for the family of the duke 
of Beauvilliers, and a book on the ministere du paMeur. He was 
in bad odour with Harlay, archbishop of Paris, who had said to him 
curtly one day : " You want to escape notice, M. Abbe, and you 
will ;" nevertheless, when Louis XIV. chose the duke of Beau- 
villiers as governor to his grandson, the duke of Burgundj'-, the 
duke at once called Fenelon, then thirty -eight years of age, to the 
important post of preceptor. 

Fenelon's best known work is Telemaque. " It is a fabulous nar- I-a^aue " 
rative," he himself says, " in the form of a heroic poem, like Homer's 
or Virgil's, wherein I have set forth the principal actions that are 
meet for a prince, whose birth points him out as destined to reign. 
I did it at a time when I was charmed with the marks of confidence 
and kindness showered upon me by the king ; I must have been 
not only the most ungrateful but the most insensate of men to have 
intended to put into it satirical and insolent portraits ; I shrink 
from the bare idea of such a design. It is true that I have inserted 
in these adventures all the verities necessary for government and 
all the defects that one can show in the exercise of sovereign 
power, but I have not stamped any of them with a peculiarity 
which would point to any portrait or caricature. The more the 
work is read, the more it will be seen that I wished to express 
everything without depicting anybody consecutively ; it is in fact, 
a narrative done in haste, in detached pieces and at different 
intervals ; all I thought of was to amuse the duke of Burgundy 
and, whilst amusing, to instruct him, without ever meaning to give 
the work to the public." 

Telemaque was published, without any author's name and by an 
indiscretion of the copyist's, on the 6th of April, 1699. Fenelon 



4^4 History of France. 

was in exile at his diocese ; public rumour before long attributed 
the work to him ; the Maximes des saints had just been condemned, 
Telemaque was seized, the printers were punished ; some copies 
had escaped the police : the book was reprinted in Holland ; all 
Europe read it, finding therein the allusion and undermeanings 
against which Fenelon defended himself. Louis XIY. was more 
than ever angry with the archbishop. 
Jinaloa Fenelon died in disgrace, leaving amongst his friends, so dimin- 

j^^^^i^. ished already by death, an immeasurable gap, and amongst his 
adversaries themselves the feeling of a great loss. " I am sorr3' for 
the death of M. de Cambrai," wrote Madame de Maintenon on the 
10th of January, 1715 : "he was a friend I lost through Quietism, 
but it is asserted that he might have done good service in the council, 
if things should be pushed so far." Fenelon had not been mistaken, 
when he wrote, once upon a time, to Madame de Maintenon, who 
consulted him about her defects : " You are good towards those for 
whom you have liking and esteem, but you are cold as soon as the 
liking leaves you ; when you are frigid, your frigidity is carried 
rather far, and, when you begin to feel mistrust, your heart is 
withdrawn too brusquely from thoce to whom you had shown con- 
fidence." 

Our thoughts may well linger over those three great minds : 
, Pascal, Bossuet, and Fenelon, one layman and two bishops, all 
equally absorbed by the great problems of human life and immor- 
tality ; with different degrees of greatness and fruitfulness, they all 
serve the same cause ; whether as defenders or assailants of Jan- 
senism and Quietism, the solitary philosopher or the prelates engaged 
in the court or in the guidance of men, all three of them serving 
God on behalf of the soul's highest interests, remained unique in 
their generation and without successors as they had been without 
predecessors. 

Leaving the desert and the Church, and once more entering the 
world we immediately encounter, amongst women, one, and one 
M darned ^^^^ ^^ ^'^® ^^^* ^^"^ — Marie de Eabutin-Chantal, marchioness of 
Sevigae. Sevigne, born at Paris on the 5th of February, 1627, five months 
before Bossuet. Like a considerable number of women in Italy in 
the sixteenth century and in France in the seventeenth, she had 
received a careful education : she knew Italian, Latin and Spanish ; 
she had for masters Menage and Chapelain ; and she early imbibed 
a real taste for solid reading, which she owed to her leaning 
towards the Jansenists and Port-Eoyal. Madame de Sevigne is a 
friend whom we read over and over again, whose emotions we share, 
to whom we go for an hour's distraction and delightful chat; we 



Lady writers. 425 

have no desire to chat with Madame de Grignan, we gladly leave 

her to her mother's exclusive affection, feeling infinitely obliged to 

her, however, for having existed, inasmuch as her mother wrote 

letters to her, Madame de Sevigne's letters to her daughter are 

superior to all her other letters, channing as they are ; when she 

writes to M. de Poraponne, to M. de Coulanges, to M. de Bussy, 

the style is less familiar, the heart less opeu, the soul less stirred ; 

she writes to her daughter as she would speak to her ; it is not 

letters, it is an animated and charming conversation, touching upon ^^^ ^^^^ 

everything, embellishing everything with an inimitable grace. She racter. 

would have very much scandalized tliose gentlemen of Port-Eoyal, 

if she had let them see into the bottom of her heart as she showed 

it to her daughter. Pascal used to say : " There are but three 

sorts of persons : those who serve God, having found him ; those 

who employ themselves in seeking Him, not having found Him ; 

and those who live without seeking Him or having found Him. 

The first are reasonable and happy; the last are mad and miserable; 

the intermediate are miserable and reasonable." Without ever 

having sought and found God in the absolute sense intended by 

Pascal, Madame de Sevigne kept approaching Him by gentle degrees. 

" We are reading a treatise by M. Hamon of Port-Royal on con- 

tinuous prayer ; though he is a hundred feet above my head, he 

nevertheless pleases and charms us. One is very glad to see that 

there have been and still are in the world people to whom God 

communicates His Holy Spirit in such abundance; but, oh God! 

when shall we have some spark, some degree of it ? How sad to 

find oneself so far from it and so near to something else ! Oh fie ! 

Let us not speak of such plight as that : it calls for sighs and 

groans and humiliations a hundred times a day." 

After having suff'ered so much from separation and so often 
traversed Prance to visit her daughter in Provence, Madame de 
Sevigne had the happiness to die in her house at Grignan. She 
was sixty-nine when an attack of small-pox carried her off on the 
19th of April, 1696, 

All the women who had been writers in her time died before 
Madame de Sevigne. Madame de Motteville, a judicious and Mesdames 
sensible woman, more independent at the bottom of her heart than ^^j^ ^^^ 
in externals, had died in 1689, exclusively occupied, from the time de Mont- 
that she lost Queen Anne of Austria, in works of piety and in P^^^s^er. 
drawing up her Memoires. Mdlle, de Montpensier, "my great 
Mademoiselle," as Madame de Sevigne used to call her, had died 
at Paris on the 5th of April, 1693, alter a violent illness, as feverish. 
as her life. Impassioned and haughty, with her head so full of 



426 



History of France. 



her greatness that she did not marry in her youth, thinking nohody 
•worthy of her except the king and the emperor who had no fancy 
for her, and ending by a private marriage with the duke of Lauzun, 
"a cadet of Gascony," whom the king would not permit her to 
espouse publicly, clever, courageous, hare-brained, generous. A few 
days after Mademoiselle, died, likewise at Paris, Madelaine de la 
Vergne, marchioness of La Fayette, the most intimate friend of 
Madame de Sevigne. Sensible, clever, a sweet and safe acquaint- 
ance, Madame de La Fayette was as simple and as true in her rela- 
tions with her confidantes as in her writings. La Princesse de 
Gleves alone has outlived the times and the friends of Madame de 
La Fayette. Following upon the " great sword-thrusts " of La 
Calprenede or Mdlle, de Scudery, this delicate, elegant and virtuous 
tale, with its pure and refined style, enchanted the court, which 
recognized itself at its best and painted under its brightest aspect ; 
it was farewell for ever to the " Pays de Tendre." 

Madame de La Fayette had in her life one great sorrow which 
had completed the ruin of her health. On the 16th of March, 
1680, after the closest and longest of intimacies, she had lost her 
best friend, the duke of La Eochefoucauld. A meddler and in- 
triguer during the Fronde, sceptical and bitter in his Maximes, the 
duke of La Rochefoucauld was amiable and kindly in his private 
life. Factions and the court had taught him a great deal about 
human nature, he had seen it and judged of it from its bad side ; 
witty, shrewd, and often profound, he was too severe to be just : 
the bitterness of his spirit breathed itself out completely in his 
writings, he kept for his friends that kindliness and that sensitive- 
ness of which he made sport. " He gave me wit," Madame de La 
Fayette would say, " but I reformed his heart." He had lost his 
son at the passage of the Rhine, in 1672. He was ill, suffering 
cruelly. " I was yesterday at M. de La Rochefoucauld's," writes 
Madame de Sevigne in 1680 : " I found him uttering loud shrieks; 
his pain was such that his endurance was quite overcome without 
a single scrap remaining ; the excessive pain upset him to such a 
degree tliat he was setting out in the open air with a violent fever 
upon him. He begged me to send you word and to assure you that 
the wheel-broken do not suffer during a single moment what he 
suffers one half of his life, and so he wishes for death as a happy 
release." He died with Bossuet at his pillow, M. de La Roche- 
foucauld thought worse of men than of life. " I have scarcely any 
fear of things," he had said : " I am not at all afraid of death." 
With all his rare qualities and great opportunities, he had done 
nothing hut frequently embroil matters in which he had meddled 



Dc Retz and La Bmyhe. 427 

and had never been anything but a great lord with a good deal of 
wit. Actionless penetration and sceptical severity may sometimes 
clear the judgment and the thoughts, but they give no force or in- 
fluence that has power over men. 

Cardinal de Eetz had more wits, more courage and more resolu- Cardinal 
tion than the duke of La Eochefoucauld ; he was more ambitious *® ^®'^' 
and m(jre bold ; he was, like him, meddlesome, powerless and 
dangerous to the State. He thought himself capable of superseding 
Cardinal Mazarin and far more worthy than he of being premier 
minister ; but every time he found himself opposed to the able 
Italian, he was beaten. All that he displayed, during the Fronde, 
of address, combination, intrigue and resolution would barely have 
sufficed to preserve his name in history, if he had not devoted his 
leisure in his retirement to writing his Memoires. Vigorous, 
animated, always striking, often amusing, sometimes showing rare 
nobleness and highmindedness, his stories and his portraits trans- 
port us to the very midst of the scenes he desires to describe and 
the personages he makes the actors in them. His rapid, nervous, 
picturesque style, is the very image of that little dark, quick, agile 
man, more soldier than bishop, and more intriguer than soldier, 
faithfully and affectionately beloved by his friends, detested by his 
very numerous enemies and dreaded by many people, for the causti- 
city of his tongue, long after the troubles of the Eronde had ceased 
and he was reduced to be a wanderer in foreign lands, still arch- 
bishop of Paris without being able to set foot in it. 

Mesdames de Sevigue and de La Fayette were of the court, as 
w^ere the duke of La Rochefoucauld and Cardinal de Eetz: La^^^'^" 
Bruyere lived all his life rubbing shoulders with the court ; he knew 
it, he described it, but he was not of it and could not be of it. 
IS^o thing is known of his family. He was born at Dourdan, in 
1639, and had just bought a post in the Treasury {tresorier de 
France) at Caen, when Bossiiet, who knew him, induced him to 
remove to Paris as teacher of history to the duke, grandson of the 
great Conde. He remained for ever attached to the person of the 
prince, who gave him a thousand crOwns a year, and he lived to tlie 
day of his death at Condi's house. 

La Bruyere's " Caracteres " is a book unique of its sort, full of 
sagacity, penetration and severity without bitterness ; a picture of 
the manners of the court and of the world, traced by the hand of 
a spectator who had not essayed its temptations, but who guessed 
them and passed judgment on them all, " a book," as M. de Male- 
zieux said to La Bruyere, " which was sure to bring its author 
many readers and many enemies." Its success was great from the 



428 History of France. 

first, and it excited lively curiosity. The courtiers liked the por- 
traits ; attempts were made to name them ; the good sense, shrewd- 
ness and truth of the observations struck ever\'body ; people had 
met a hundred times those whom La Bruyere had described. The 
form appeared of a rarer order than even the matter ; it was a 
brilliant, uncommon style, as varied as human nature, always 
elegant and pure, original and animated, rising sometimes to the 
height of the noblest thoughts, gay and grave, pointed and serious. 
Avoiding, by richness in turns and expression, the uniformity 
native to the subject. La Bruyere rivetted attention by a succession 
of touches making a masterly picture. 
His cha- More earnest and less bitter than La Eochefoucauld, and as 
racter as a brilliant and as firm as Cardinal de Retz, La Bruyeie was a more 
sincere believer than either. " I feel that there is a God, and I do 
not feel that there is none j that is enough for me ; the reasoning 
of the world is useless to me ; I conclude that God exists ; are men 
good enough, faithful enough, equitable enough to deserve all our 
confidence, and not make us wish at least for the existence of God 
to whom we may appeal from their judgments and have recourse 
when we are persecuted or betrayed %" A very strong reason and 
of potent logic, naturally imprinted upon an upright spirit and a 
sensible mind, irresistibly convinced, both of them, that justice 
alone can govern the world. 

We pass from prose to poetry, from La Bruyere to Corneille, who 
had died in 1684, too late for his fame, in spite of the vigorous 
returns of genius which still flash forth sometimes in his feeblest 
Comeille. works. Throughout the Eegency and the Fronde, Corneille had 
continued to occupy almost alone the great French stage ; Eotrou, 
his sometime rival with his piece of Venceslas and ever tenderly 
attached to him, had died, in 1050, at Dreux, of which he was 
civil magistrate. An epidemic was ravaging the town, and he was 
urged to go away : " I am the only one who can maintain good 
order, and I shall remain," he replied: "at the moment of my 
writing to you the bells are tolling for the twenty-second person 
to-day ; perhaps, to-morrow it will be for me, but my conscience 
has marked out my duty; God's vviR be done !" Two days later 
he was dead. 

Corneille had dedicated Polyeude to the regent Anne of Austria; 
he published in a single year Rodogune and the Mort de Fompee, 
dedicating this latter piece to Mazarin, in gratitude, he said, for 
an act of generosity with which his Eminence had surprised him. 
At the same time he borrowed from the Spanish drama the canvas 
of the Menteur, the first really French comedy which appeared on 




PETER CORNEILLE. 



Poetry. — Corneille and Racine, 429 

tlie 7i^ards, and which Moliere showed that he could appreciate at 
its proper value. After this attempt, due perhaps to the desire 
felt by Corneille to triumph over- his rivals in the style in which he 
had walked abreast with them, he let tragedy resume its legitimate 
empire over a genius formed by it; he wrote Heraclius and 
Nicomede, which are equal in parts to his finest master-pieces. 
But by this time the great genius no longer soared with equal 
flight; Theodore and Pertharife had been failures. '• I don't men- 
tion them," Corneille would say, " in order to avoid the vexation His later 
of remembering them." He had announced his renunciation of the ^o'^^^- 
stage; he was translating into verse the Imitation of Christ. "It 
were better," he had written in his preface to Fertharite, " that I 
took leave myself instead of waiting till it is taken of me altogether ; 
it is quite right that after twenty years' work I should begin to 
perceive that I am becoming too old to be still in the fashion. 
This resolution is not so strong but that it may be broken ; there 
is every appearance, however, of my abiding by it." 

Posterity has done for Corneille more than Louis XIY. could 
liave done ; it has left in oblivion Agesilas, Attila, Titus and Pul- 
cherie, it has preserved the memory of the triumphs only. The 
poet was accustomed to say with a smile, when he was reproached 
with his slowness and emptiness in conversation : " I am Peter 
Corneille all the same." The world has passed similar judgment 
on his works ; in spite of the rebuffs of his latter years, he has 
remained " the great Corneille," 

When he died, in 1684, Eacine, elected by the Academy in 1673, Racine. 
found himself on the point of becoming its director : he claimed 
the honour of presiding at the obsequies of Corneille. The latter 
had not been admitted to the body until 1641, after having under- 
gone two rebuffs. Corneille had died in the night. The Academy 
decided in favour of Abbe de Lavau, the outgoing director. " No- 
body but you could pretend to bury Corneille," said Benserade to 
Eacine, " yet you have not been able to obtain the chance." It 
was only when he received into the Academy Thomas Corneille, in 
his brother's place, that Eacine could praise, to his heart's content, 
the master and rival who, in old age, had done him the honour to 
dread him. At that time, his own dramatic career was already- 
ended. He was born, in 1639, at La Ferte-Milon; he had made 
his first appearance on the stage in 1664, with the Freres ennemiSf 
and had taken leave of it in 1673 with Fhedre ; Esther and Athaliej 
played in 1689 and in 1691 by the young ladies of St. Cyr, were 
not regarded by their author and his austere friends as any dero- 
gation from the pious engagements he had entered into. If his first 



430 History of France, 

two plays were feeble attempts, spoilt by a declamatory style, and 
altogether deficient in interest, " Andromaque " was a masterpiece, 
and all the other subsequent creations of Eacine's pen only served 
to confirm his reputation as one of the great delineators of the 
passions. 

Eacine for a long while enjoyed the favours of the king, who 
went so far as to tolerate the attachment the poet had always testi- 
fied towards Port-Eoyal. Eacine, moreover, showed tact in humour- 

_. . ing the susceptibilities of Louis XIV. and his counsellors. All 

He mc'irs ° ^ 

the dis- this caution did not prevent him, however, from displeasing the 

pleasure of ]^ing. After a conversation he had held with Madame de Main- 
" tenon about the miseries of the people, she asked him for a memo- 
randum on the subject. The king demanded the name of the 
author and flew out at him. " Because he is a perfect master of 
verse," said he, "does he think he knows everything 1 And, because 
he is a great poet, does he want to be minister ?" On the 21st of 
April, 1699, the great poet, the scrupulous Christian, the noble and 
delicate painter of the purest passions of the soul, expired at Paris 
at fifty-nine years of age, leaving life without regret, spite of all the 
successes with which he had been crowned. Unlike Corneille with 
the Cid, he did not take tragedy and glory by assault, he conquered 
them both by degrees, raising himself at each new effort and 
gaining over little by little the most passionate admirers of his 
great rival ; at the pinnacle of this reputation and this victory, at 
thirty-eight years of age, he had voluntarily shut the door against 
the intoxications and pride of success, he had mutilated his life, 
buried his genius in penitence, obeying simply the calls of his con- 
science, and, Avith singular moderation in the very midst of exag- 
geration, becoming a father of a family and remaining a courtier, 
at the same time that he gave up the stage and glory. Eacine was 
gentle and sensible even in his repentance and his sacrifice. 
Boileau gave religion the credit for this very moderation : " Eeason 
commonly brings others to faith, it was faith which brought M. 
Eacine to reason." 

Boileau. Boileau himself had entered the arena of letters at three-and- 

twenty, after a sickly and melancholy childhood. The Art Poetique 
and the Lutrin appeared in 1674 ; the first nine Satires and several 
of the Epistles had preceded them. Eather a witty, shrewd and 
able versifier than a great poet, Boileau displayed in the Jjutrin a 
richness and suppleness of fancy which his other works had not 
foreshadowed. The broad and cynical buffoonery of Scarron's 
burlesques had always shocked his severe and pure taste. " Your 
father was weak enough to read Virgile travesti and laugh over it," 



La Fontaine. — Moliere. 43 1 

he -would say to Louis Eaciiie, "but he kept it dark from me." In 
the Lutrin, Boileau sought the gay and the laughable under noble and 
polished forms : the gay lost by it, the laughable remained stamped 
with an ineffaceable seal. He survived all his friends ; La Fontaine, J"* ■^°'^" 
born in 1 621 at Chateau-Thierry, had died in 1695. He had entered 
in his youth the brotherhood of the Oratory, vv^hich he had soon 
quitted, being unable, he used to say, to accustom himself to 
theology; he vi^ent and came between town and town, amusing 
himself everywhere, and already writing a little. La Fontaine has 
been described as a solitary being, without wit and without external 
charm of any kind. La Bruyere has said : "A certain man appears, 
loutish, heavy, stupid ; he can neither talk nor relate what he has 
just seen ; he sets himself to writing, and it is a model of story- 
telling ; he makes speakers of animals, trees, stones, everything 
that cannot speak ; there is nothing but lightness and elegance, 
nothing but natural beauty and delicacy in his works." We are 
told that La Fontaine knew nothing of natural history ; he knew 
and loved animals ; up to his time, fable-writers had been merely 
philosophers or satirists ; he was the first who was a poet, unique 
not only in France but in Europe, discovering the deep and secret 
charm of nature, animating it with his inexhaustible and graceful 
genius, giving lessons to men from the example of animals, without 
making the latter speak like man, ever supple and natural, some- 
times elegant and noble, with penetration beneath the cloak of his 
simplicity, inimitable in the line which he had chosen from taste, 
from instinct, and not from want of power to transport his genius 
elsewhither. 

A charming and a curious being, serious and simple, profound 
and childlike, winning by reason of his very vagaries, his good- 
natured originality, his helplessness in common life, La Fontaine 
knew how to estimate the literary merits as well as the moral 
qualities of his illustrious friends; Moliere, in particular, was 
appreciated by him at once, and he commemorated the death of the 
great comic writer in a touching epitaph. 

Shakspeare might dispute with Corneille and Eacine the sceptre 
of tragedy, he had succeeded in showing himself as full of power, 
with more truth, as the one, and as full of tenderness, with more 
profundity, as the other ; Moliere is superior to him in originality, Molifcw. 
abundance and perfection of characters ; he yields to him neither 
in range, nor penetration, nor complete knowledge of human nature. 
The lives of these two great geniuses, authors and actors both 
together, present in other respects certain features of resemblance. 
Both were intended for another career than that of the stage ; both, 



432 History of France. 

carried away by an irresistible passion, assembled about tbem a few 
actors, leading at first a roving life, to end by becoming the delight 
of the court and of the world. In 1645- (? 1643), Moliere had 
formed, with the ambitious title of illustre theatre, a small company 
of actors who, being unable to maintain themselves at Paris, for a 
long while tramped the provinces, through all the troubles of the 
His first Fronde, It was in 1653 that Moliere brought out at Lyons his 
piays. comedy V^tourdi, the first regular piece he had ever composed. The 
Depit amoureux was played at Beziers, in 1656, at the opening of 
the session of the States of Languedoc ; the company returned to 
Paris in 1658 ; in 1659, Moliere, who had obtained a licence from 
the king, gave at his own theatre Jes Predeuses ridicules. He 
broke with all imitation of the Italians and the Spaniards, and, 
taking off to the life the manners of his own times, he boldly attacked 
the affected exaggeration and absurd pretensions of the vulgar imi- 
tators of the Hotel de Eambouillet. The ^cole des Maria and the 
Fdcheux were played at Yanx. , The l^cole des Femmes the Im- 
j>romptu de Versailles, the Critique de V^cole des Femmes, began 
the belKcose period in the great comic poet's life. Accused of im- 
piety, attacked in the honour of his private life, Moliere, returning 
insult for insult, delivered over those amongst his enemies who 
offered a butt for ridicule, to the derision of the court and of pos- 
terity. The Festin de Pierre and the signal punishment of the 
libertine (free-thinker) were intended to clear the author from the 
reproach of impiety; la Princesse d' Slide and V Amour medecin were 
but charming interludes in the great struggle henceforth instituted 
'leMisan- between realitj'- and appearance; in 1666, Moliere produced le Mis- 
tnrope. anthrope, a frank and noble spirit's 'sublime invective against the 
frivolity, perfidious and showy semblances of court. The Misa.n- 
tlirope is a shriek of despair uttered by virtue, excited and almost 
"Tartuffe" distraught at the defeat she forebodes. The Tartuffe was a new 
effort in the same direction, and bolder in that it attacked religious 
hypocrisy and seemed to aim its blows even at religion itself. 
Moliere was a long time working at it ; the first acts had been 
performed, in 1664, at court under the title of V Hypocrite, at the 
same time as la Princesse d'Slide. Though played once publicly, 
in 1667, under the title of I'imjjosteur, the piece did not appear 
definitively on the stage until 1669, having undoubtedly excited 
more scandal by interdiction than it would have done by representa- 
tion. The king's good sense and judgment at last prevailed over 
the terrors of the truly devout and the resentment of hypocrites. 
He had just seen an impious piece of buffoonery played. "I should 
very much like to know," said he to the prince of Conde, who stood 



Moliere. 433 

up for Moliere, an old fellow-student of his brotlier's, the prince of 
Conti's, " why people who are so greatly scandalized at Moliere's 
comedy say nothing about Scaramouclie ? " " The reason of that," 
a.nswered the prince, " is that Scaramoiiche makes fun of heaven. 
and religion, about which those gentry do not care, and that Moliere 
makes fun of their own selves, which they cannot brook." The 
prince might have added that all the blows in Tartuffe, a master- 
piece of shrewdness, force and fearless and deep wrath, struck home 
at hypocrisy. 

Whilst waiting for permission to have Tartuffe played, Moliere 
had brought out le Medecin malgre lui, Amphitryon, Georges Dandin 
and VAvare, lavishing freely upon them the inexhaustible resources 
of his genius, which was ever ready to supply the wants of kingly 
and princely entertainments. Monsieur de Pourceaugnac was played 
for the first time at Chambord on the 6th of October, 1669 ; a year 
afterwards, on the same stage, appeared le Bourgeois gentilhomme, "leBour- 
with the interludes and music of LuUi. The piece was a direct ^ij^onuae " 
attack upon one of the most frequent absurdities of his day ; many 
of the courtiers felt in their hearts that they were attacked ; there 
was a burst of wrath at the first representation, by which the king 
had not appeared to be struck. Moliere thought it was all over 
with him. Louis XIV. desired to see the piece a second time ; 
" You have never written anything yet which has amused me so 
much; your comedy is excellent," said he to the poet; the ccurt 
was at once seized with a fit of admiration. 

Psyche, Les Fourheries de Scapin, La Oomtesse d'Escarhagnas, 
deserve just a mention; Les Ferames savantes had at first but little "I-eM'a-^ 
success ; the piece was considered heavy ; the marvellous nicety of naire " 
the portraits, the correctness of the judgments, the delicacy and 
elegance of the dialogue were not appreciated until later on. Le 
Malade imaginaire, Moliere's last play, was also the last of that 
succession of blows which he had so often dealt the doctors. 

It has been a labour of love to go into some detail over the 
lives, works and characters of the great writers during the age of 
Louis XIV. They did too much honour to their time and their 
country, they had too great and too deep an effect in France and 
in Europe upon the successive developments of the human intellect 
to refuse them an important place in the history of that France to 
whose influence and glory they so poAverfuUy contributed. 

In this brief survey of French literature we should not forget to 
mention the French Academy, which had grown and found its liberty 
had increased under the sway of Louis XIV. ; i^ held its sittings at 
the Louvre, and, as regarded complimentary addresses to the king 

r F 



Tlie 



434 History of France. 

~ on state occasions, it took rank with the sovereign bodies. ITie 
Academy of medals and inscriptions was founded by Colbert in 
1662, " in order to render the acts of the king immortal by deciding 

Academies ^^ legends of the medals struck in his honour," Pontchartraia 
raised to forty the number of the members of the -petite academie, 
as it was called, extended its functions, and entrusted it thenceforth 
with the charge of publishing curious documents relating to the 
history of France. The Academy of Sciences had already for many 
years had sittings in one of the rooms of the king's library. Like 
the French Academy, it had owed its origin to private meetings at 
which Descartes, Gassendi and young Pascal were accustomed to be 
present. " There are in the world scholars of two sorts," said a 
note sent to Colbert about the formation of the new Academy ; 
" some give themselves up to science because it is a pleasure to 
them ; they are content, as the fruit of their labours, with the 
knowledge they acquire, and, if they are known, it is only amongst 
those with whom they converse unambitiously and for mutual 
instruction ; these are bond fide scholars, whom it is impossible to 
do without in a design so great as that of the Academie roydle. 
There are others who cultivate science only as a field which is to 
give them sustenance, and, as they see by experience that great 
rewards fall only to those who make the most noise in the world, 
they apply themselves especially, not to making new discoveries, 
for hitherto that has not been recompensed, but to whatever may 
bring them into notice ; these are scholars of the fashionable world, 
and such as one knows best." Colbert had the true scholar's taste ; 
he had brought Cassini from Italy to take the direction of the new 
Observatory ; he had ordered surveys for a general map of France ; 
he had founded the Journal den Savants ; literary men, whether 
Frenchmen or foreigners, enjoyed the king's bounties ; Colbert had 
even conceived the plan of a universal Academy, a veritable fore- 
runner of the Institute. The arts were not forgotten in this grand 
project; the academy of painting and sculpture dated from the 
regency of Anne of Austria ; the pretensions of the Masters of Arts 

Fine arts, (maitres es arts), who placed an interdict upon artists not belonging 
to their corporation, had driven Charles Lebrun, himself the son of 
a Master, to agitate for its foundation ; Colbert added to it the 
academy of music and the academy of architecture, and created the 
French school of painting at Eome. The tradition of the masters 
in vogue in Italy, of the Caracci, of Guido, of Paul Veronese, had 
reached Paris with Simon Vouet, who had long lived at Eome. 
He was succeeded there by Le Poussin, whose two pupils, Lesueur 
and Claude Gelee, called Lorrain, soon equalled their master. 



Painters, sculptors, engravers. 435 

Philip of Champagne deserves a prominent place in the brilliant 
roll of French seventeenth century artists. He had passionately 
admired Le Poussin, he had attached himself to Lesueur. " JSTever," 
says M. Vitet, " had he sacrificed to fashion ; never had he lalleu 
into the vagaries of the degenerate Italian style." This upright, 
simple, painstaking soul, this inflexible conscience, looking con- 
tinually into the human face, had preserved in his admirable phiiip of 
portraits the life and the expression of nature which he was Cham- 
incessantly trying to seize and re^Droduce. Lebrun was preferred ^ ° ' 
to him as first painter to the king by Louis XIV. himself ; Philip 
of Champagne was delighted thereat ; he lived in retirement, in 
fidelity to his friends of Port-Ptoyal, whose austere and vigorous 
lineaments he loved to trace, beginning with M. de St. Cyran, and 
ending with his own daughter. Sister Suzanne, who was restored to 
health by the prayers of Mother Agnes Arnauld. 

Lebrun was as able a courtier as he was a good painter : the Lebrun. 
clever arrangement of his pictures, the richness and brilliancy of 
his talent, his faculty for applying art to industry, secured him 
with Louis XIV. a sway which lasted as long as his life. He was 
first painter to the king, he was director of the Gobelins and of 
the academy of painting. He followed the king's ideas, being 
entirely after his own heart; for fourteen years he worked for 
Louis XIV., representing his life and his conquests, at Versailles ; 
painting for the Louvre the victories of Alexander, which were 
engraved almost immediately by Audran and Edelinck. After 
Lebrun's death (1690) Mignard became first painter to the king. 
He painted the ceiling of the Val-de-Grace, which was celebrated by 
Moliere, but it was as a painter of portraits that he excelled in 
France : " M. Mignard does them best," said Le Poussin not long JJig^a^d 
before, with lofty good-nature, " though his heads are all paint, 
without force or character." To Mignard succeeded Rigaud as 
portrait- painter, worthy to preserve the features of Bossuet and 
Fenelon. The unitj'^ of organization, the brilliancy of style, the 
imposing majesty which the king's taste had everywhere stamped 
about him upon art as well as upon literature, were by this time 
beginning to decay simultaneously with the old age of Louis XIV., 
with the reverses of his arms and the increasing gloominess of hia 
court ; the artists who had illustrated his reign were dying one 
after another as well as the orators and the poets ; the sculptor 
James Sarazin had been gone some time ; Puget and the Anguiers 
were dead, as well as Mansard, Perrault and Le Notre ; Girardon 
had but a few months to live ; only Coysevox was destined to 
survive the king whose statue he had many a time moulded. The 

p F 2 



436 



History of France. 



Madame de 
Monte- 
span. 



great age was disappearing slowly and sadly, throwing out to the 
last some noble gleams, like the aged king who had constantly 
served as its centre and guide, like olden France which he had 
crowned with its last and its most splendid wreath. 

Louis XIV. reigned everywhere, over his people, over his age, 
often over Europe ; but nowhere did he reign so completely as over 
his court. ]N"ever were the wishes, the defects and the vices of a 
man so completely a law to other men as at the court of Louis XIV. 
during the whole period of his long life. When near to him, in 
the palace of Versailles, men lived and hoped and trembled ; 
everywhere else in France, even at Paris, men vegetated. The 
existence of the great lords was concentrated in the court, about 
the person of the king Scarcely could the most important duties 
bring them to absent themselves for any time. They returned 
quickly, with alacrity, with ardour; only poverty or a certain 
rustic pride kept gentlemen in their provinces. "The court does 
not make one happy," says La Bruyere, "it prevents one from 
being so anywhere else." 

The principle of absolute power, firmly fixed in the young king's 
mind, began to pervade his court from the time that he disgraced 
Fouquet and ceased to dissemble his affection for Mdlle. de La 
Valliere. She was young, charming and modest. Of all the king's 
favourites she alone loved him sincerely. " What a pity he is a 
king !" she would say. Louis XIV. made her a duchess ; but aU 
she cared about was to see him and please him. When Madame de 
Montespan began to supplant her in the king's favour, the grief of 
Madame de La Valliere was so great that she thought she should 
die of it. Then she turned to God, in penitence and despair ; and, 
later on, it was at her side that Madame de Montespan, in her turn 
forced to quit the court, went to seek advice and pious consolation. 
" This soul will be a miracle of grace," Bossuet had said. 

Madame de Montespan was haughty, passionate, "with hair 
dressed in a thousand ringlets, a majestic beauty to show off to the 
ambassadors :" she opeiily paraded the favour she was in, accepting 
and angling for the graces the king was pleased to do her and hers, 
having the superintendence of the household of the queen, whom 
she insulted without disguise, to the extent of wounding the king 
himself: "Pray consider that she is your mistress," he said one 
day to his favourite. The scandal was great ; Bossuet attempted 
the task of stopping it. It was the time of the Jubilee : neither 
the king nor Madame de Montespan had lost all religious feeling ; 
the wrath of God and the refusal of the sacraments had terrors for 
them still. 



The court. 437 

Bossuet liad acted in vain " like a pontiff of the earliest times, 
with a freedom worthy of the earliest ages and the earliest bishops 
of the Church," says St. Simon. He saw the inutility of his 
efforts ; henceforth prudence and courtly behaviour put a seal upon 
his lips. It was the time of the great king's omnipotence and 
highest splendour, the time when nobody withstood his wishes. 
The great Mademoiselle had just attempted to show her indepen- 
dence ; tired of not being married, she had made up her mind to a "LaGrande 
love-match ; she did not espouse Lauzun just then, the king broke ' . ®' „ 
off the marriage. " I will make you so great," he said to Lauzun, end Lau- 
" that you shall have no cause to regret what I am taking from you ; ^^^• 
meanwhile, I make you duke and peer and marshal of France," 
" Sir," broke in Lauzun insolently, " you have made so many dukes 
that it is no longer an honour to be one, and, as for the baton of 
marshal of France, your Majesty can give it me when I have 
earned it by my services." He was before long sent to Pignerol, 
where he passed ten years. There he met Fouquet and that mys- 
terious personage called the Iron Mask, whose name has not yet 
been discovered to a certainty by means of all the most ingenious 
conjectures. It was only by settling all her property on the duke 
of Maine after herself that Mademoiselle purchased Lauzun's 
release. The king had given his posts to the prince of Marcillac, 
son of La Rochefoucauld. 

Louis XIV. entered benevolently into the affairs of a marshal of j^q^^ xiV 
France ; he paid his debts, and the marshal was his domed ic ; all and rhe 
the court had come to that ; the duties which brought servants in ''"^^ ^^^^' 
proximity to the king's person were eagerly sought after by the 
greatest lords. Bontenips, his chief valet, and Fagon, his physician, 
as well as his surgeon Marechal, very excellent men too, were all- 
powerful amongst the courtiers. Louis XIV. possessed the art of 
making his slightest favours prized; to hold the candlestick at 
bed-time (au petit coucJier), to appear in the trips to Marly, to 
play in the king's own game, such was the ambition of the most 
distinguished ; the possessors of grand historic castles, of fine 
houses at Paris, crowded together in attics at Versailles, too happy 
to obtain a lodging in the palace. The whole mind of the greatest 
personages, his favourites at the head, was set upon devising means 
of pleasing the king ; Madame de Montespan had pictures painted 
in miniature of all the towns he had taken in Holland ; they were 
made into a book which was worth four thousand pistoles, and of 
which Eacine and Boileau wrote the text ; people of tact, like 
M. de Langlee, paid court to the master through those whom he loved. 

AU the style of living at court was in accordance with the 



438 History of France, 

magnificence of tlie king and his courtiers ; Colbert was beside 
himself at the sums the queen lavished on play. Madame de 
Montespan lost and won back four millions in one night at 
bassette ; Mdlle. de Fontanges gave av^ay twenty thousand crowns' 
worth of J^ew Year's gifts. A new power, however, was beginning 
to appear on the horizon, with such modesty and backwardness that 
Madame de none could as yet discern it, least of all could the king. Madame 
non. " ^^ Montespan had looked out for some one to take care of and 
ediicate her children. She had thought of Madame Scarron ; she 
considered her clever ; she Avas so herself, " in that unique style 
which was peculiar to the Mortemarts," said the duke of St. Simon; 
she was fond of conversation ; Madame Scarron had a reputation 
for being rather a blue-stocking ; this the king did not like ; 
Madame de Montespan had her way ; Madame Scarron took charge 
of the children secretly and in an isolated house. She was atten- 
tive, careful, sensible. The king was struck with her devotion to 
the children entrusted to her. " She can love," he said : " it 
would be a pleasure to be loved by her." This expression plainly 
indicated what was to happen ; and Madame de Montespan saw 
herself supplanted by Madame Scarron. The widow of the 
deformed poet had bought the estate of Maintenon out of the king's 
bounty. He made her take the title. The recollection of Scarron 
"was displeasing to him. 

The queen had died on the 30th of July, 1683, piously and 
gently, as she had lived. " This is the first sorrow she ever caused 
me," said the king, thus rendering homage, in his superb and 
unconscious egotism, to the patient virtue of the wife he had 
put to such cruel trials. Madame de Maintenon was agitated but 
Her cha- resolute. " Madame de Montespan has plunged into the deepest 
lacter. devoutness," she wrote, two months after the queen's death : " it 
is quite time she edified us; as for me, T no longer think of 
retiring." Her strong common-sense and her far-sighted ambition, 
far more than her virtue, had secured her against rocks ahead ; 
henceforth she saw the goal, she was close upon it, she moved 
towards it with an even step. The date has never been ascertained 
exactly of the king's private marriage with Madame de Maintenon. 
It took place probably eighteen months or two years after the 
queen's death ; the king was forty-seven, Madame de Maintenon 
fifty. " She had great remains of beauty, bright and sprightly 
eyes, an incomparable grace," says St. Simon, who detested her, 
" an air of ease and yet of restraint and respect, a great deal of 
cleverness with a speech that was sweet, correct, in good terms and 
naturally eloquent and brief." 



The duchess of Burgundy, 439 

Madame de La Valliere liad held sway over the young and pas- 
sionate heart of the prince, Madame de Montespan over the court, 
Madame de Maintenon alone established her empire over the man 
and the king. Alone she had any part in affairs, a smaller part 
than has frequently been made out, but important, nevertheless, 
and sometimes decisive. Ministers went occasionally to do their 
work in her presence with the king, who would turn to her when 
the questions were embarrassing, and ask, " What does your 
Solidity think % " The opinions she gave were generally moderate 
and discreet. Whatever the apparent reserve and modesty with Her in- 

which it was cloaked, the real power of Madame de Maintenon ^'^^^^^ . 

over Louis 
over the king's mind peeped out more and more into broad daylight. xiV. 

She promoted it dexterously by her extreme anxiety to please him 
as well as by her natural and sincere attachment to the children 
whom she had brought up and who had a place near the heart of 
Louis XIV. 

The chief ornament of the Court of Versailles was the Duchess The 
of Burgundy. For the king and for Madame de Maintenon, the duchess of 
great and inexhaustible attraction of this young lady washer gaiety 
and unconstrained ease, tempered by the most delicate respect, 
which, on coming as quite a child to France from the court of 
Savoy, she had tact enough to introduce and always maintain, 
amidst the most intimate familiarity. " In public, demure, res- 
pectful with the king, and on terms of timid propriety with Madame 
de Maintenon, whom she never called anything but OMnt, thus 
prettily blending rank and affection. In private, chattering, frisk- 
ing, fluttering around them, at one time. perched on the arm of one 
or the other's chairs, at another playfully sitting on their knee, she 
would throw herself upon their necks, embrace them, kiss them, 
fondle them, pull them to pieces, chuck them under the chin, tease 
them, rummage their tables, their papers, their letters, reading 
them sometimes against their will, according as she saw that they 
were in the humour to laugh at it, and occasionally speaking 
thereon. Admitted to everything, even at the reception of couriers 
bringing the most important news, going in to the king at any hour, 
even at the time the council was sitting, useful and also fatal to 
ministers themselves, but always inclined to help, to excuse, to 
benefit, unless she were violently set against any body. The king 
could not do without her ; when, rarely, she was absent from his 
supper in public, it was plainly shown by a cloud of more than 
usual gravity and taciturnity over the king's whole person ; and so, 
when it happened that some ball in winter or some party in 
summer made her break into the night, she arranged matters so 



440 History of France. 

well that she was there to kiss the king the moment he was awake 
and to amuse him with an account of the affair" [Memoires de St. 
Simon. 

The dauphiness had died in 1690; the duchess of Burgundy- 
was, therefore, almost from childhood queen of the court and before 
long the idol of the courtiers ; it was around her that pleasures 
sprang up ; it was for her that the king gave the entertainments to 
which he had habituated Yersailles, not that for her sake or to take 
care of her health he would ever consent to modify his habits or 
make the least change in his plans. " Thank God, it is over," he 
exclaimed one day, after an accident to the princess; "I shall no 
longer be thwarted in my trips, and in all I desire to do, by the 
representations of physicians. I shall come and go as I fancy ; and 
I shall be left in peace." Even in his court and amongst his most 
devoted servants, this monstrous egotism astounded and scandalized 
everybody. 
and ^ Flattery, at Versailles, ran a risk of becoming hypocrisy. On 

hypocrisy, returning to a regular life, the king was for imposing the same upon 
his whole court ; the instinct of order and regularity, smothered 
for a while in the hey-day of passion, had resumed all its sway over 
the naturally proper and steady mind of Louis XIV. His dignity 
and his authority were equally involved in the cause of propriety 
and regularity at his court ; he imposed this yoke as well as all the 
others; there appeared to be entire obedience; only some princes 
or princesses escaped it sometimes, getting about them a few free- 
thinkers or boon-companions ; good, honest folks showed ingenuous 
joy ; the virtuous and far-sighted were secretly uneasy at the false- 
hood and deplored the pressure put on so many consciences and so 
many lives. The king was sincere in his repentance for the past, 
many persons in his court were as sincere as he ; others, who were 
not, affected, in order to please him, the externals of austerity ; 
absolute power oppressed all spirits, extorting from them that 
hypocritical complaisance which it is liable to engender ; corrup- 
tion was already brooding beneath appearances of piety ; the reign 
of Louis XV. was to see its deplorable fruits displayed with a haste 
and a scandal which are to be explained only by the oppression 
exercised in the last years of King Louis XIV. 

Madame de Maintenon was like the genius of this reaction 
towards regularity, propriety, order; all the responsibility for it 
has been thrown upon her; the good she did has disappeared 
beneath the evil she allowed or encouraged; the regard lavished 
upon her by the king has caused illusions as to the discreet care she 
was continually taking to please him. She was faithful to her 



Influence of women at Madrid and Versailles. 441 

friends, so long as they were in favour with the king ; if they had 
the misfortune to displease him, she, at the very least, gave uj) see- 
ing them ; without courage or hardihood to withstand the caprices 
and wishes of Louis XIV., she had gained and preserved her empire 
by dint of dexterity and far-sighted suppleness beneath the externals 
of dignity. 

It was through Madame de Maintenon and her correspondence jjjg pj.jn, 
with the princess des Ursins that the private business between the cess des 
two courts of France and Spain was often carried on. At Madrid "'^^^'^3* 
far more than at Versailles, the influence of women was all-power- 
ful. The queen ruled her husband, who was honest and courageous 
but without wit or daring ; and the princess des Ursins ruled the 
queen, as intelligent and as amiable as her sister the duchess of 
Burgundy, but more ambitious and more haughty. Louis XIV. 
had several times conceived some misgiving of the camarera major's 
influence over his grandson ; she had been disgraced and then 
recalled ; she had finally established her sway by her fidelity, 
ability, dexterity and indomitable courage. She served France 
habitually, Spain and her own influence in Spain always ; she had 
been charming, with an air of nobility, grace, elegance and majesty 
all together, and accustomed to the highest society and the most 
delicate intrigues, during her sojourn at Eome and Madrid ; she was 
full of foresight and calculation, but impassioned, ambitious, 
implacable, pushing to extremes her amity as well as her hatred, 
faithful to her master and mistress in their most cruel trials, and 
then hampering and retarding peace for the sake of securing for 
herself a principality in the Low Countries. 

But the time came for Madame des Ursins to make definitive Her power 
trial of fortune's inconstancy. After having enjoyed unlimited ^^^ ^i\\ 
power and influence, with great difficulty she obtained an asylum 
at Eome, where she lived seven years longer, preserving all her 
health, strength, mind and easy grace until she died, in 1722, at 
more than eighty four years of age, in obscurity and sadness, not- 
withstanding her opulence, but avenged of her Spanish foes, Car- 
dinals della Giudice and Alberoni, whom she met again at Eome, 
disgraced and fugitive like herself. " I do not kiiow where I may 
die," she wrote to Madame de Maintenon, at that time in retire- 
ment at St. Cyr. Both had survived their power ; the princess des 
Ursins had not long since wanted to secure for herself a dominion j 
Madame de Maintenon, more far-sighted and more modest, had 
aspired to no more than repose in the convent which she had 
founded and endowed. Discreet in her retirement as well as in her 
life, she had not left to chance the selection of a place where she 
might die. 



442 History of France, 

" One has no more luck at our age," Louis XIV. had said to bis 
old friend Marshal Villars, returning fi'om his most disastrous cam- 
paign. It was a bitter reflection upon himself which had put these 
words into the king's mouth. After the most brilliant, the most 
continually and invariably triumphant of reigns, he began to see 
fortune slipping away from him and the grievous consequences of 
his errors successively overwhelming the State. " God is punish- 
ing me, I have richly deserved it," he said to Marshal Villars, who 
was ou the point of setting out for the battle of Denain. The aged 
king, dispirited and beaten, could nut set down to men his misfor- 
tunes and reverses ; the hand of God Himself was raised against his 
The sun of ^"^^^^ j Death was knocking double knocks all round him. The 
Louis XIV. grand-dauphin had for some days past been ill of small-pox ; he 
sets. died in April, 1711 ; the duchess of Burgundy was carried off by 

an attack of malignant fever in February, 1712 j her husband fol- 
lowed her within a week, and their eldest child, the duke of 
Brittany about a month afterwards. 

There was universal and sincere mourning in France and in 
Europe. The most sinister rumours circulated darkly ; a base 
intrigue caused the duke of Orleans to be accused ; people called 
to mind his taste for chemistry and even magic, his flagrant impiety, 
his scandalous debauchery ; beside himself with grief and anger, he 
demanded of the king to be sent to the Bastille ; the king refused 
curtly, coldly, not unmoved in his secret heart by the perfidious in- 
sinuations which made their way even to him, but too just and too 
sensible to entertain a hateful lie, which, nevertheless, lay heavy on 
the duke of Orleans to the end of his days. 

Darkly, but to more effect, the same rumours were renewed before 
long. The duke of Berry died at the age of twenty-seven, on the 
4th of May, 1714, of a disease which presented the same features as 
the scarlet fever {rougeole pourpree) to which his brother and sister- 
in-law had succumbed. The king was old and sad : the state of his 
kingdom preyed upon his mind ; he was surrounded by influences 
hostile to his nephew, whom he himself called " a vaunter of 
crimes." A child who was not five years old remained sole heir to 
the throne. Madame de Maintenon, as sad as the king, " naturally 
mistrustful, addicted to jealousies, susceptibilities, suspicions, aver- 
sions, spites, and woman's wiles " [Lettres de Fenelon au due de 
Chevreuse], being, moreover, sincerely attached to the king's 
natural children, was constantly active on their behalf. On the 
19th of July, 1714, the king announced to the premier president 
Louis XIV. arid the attorney-general of the parliament of Paris that it was his 
pleasure to grant to the duke of Maine and to the count of Tou- 
louse, for themselves. and their descendants, the rank of princes of 




LOUIS XIV. IN HIS OLD AGE. 



The king's last will. 443 

the blood, in its full extent, and that he desired that the deed 
should be enregistered in the parliament. Soon after, still under 
the same influence, he made a will which was kept a profound 
secret and which he sent to be deposited in the strong-room {greffe) 
of the parliament, committing the guardianship of the future king 
to the duke of Maine, and placing him, as well as his brother, on 
the council of regency, with close restrictions as to the dake of . , 

Orleans, who would be naturally called to the government of Causes, 
the kingdom during the minority. The will was darkly talked 
about : the effect of the elevation of bastards to the rank of princes 
of the blood had been terrible. " There was no longer any son of 
France : the Spanish branch had renounced ; the duke of Orleans 
had been carefully placed in such a position as not to dare say a 
word or show the least dissatisfaction ; his only son was a child ; 
neither the duke (of Berry), his brothers, nor the prince of Conti, 
were of an age or of standing, in the king's eyes, to make the least 
trouble in the world about it. The bomb-shell dropped all at once 
when nobody could have expected it, and everybody fell on his 
stomach, as is done when a shell drops ; everybody was gloomy and 
almost wild ; the king himself appeared as if exhausted by so great 
an effort of will and power." He had only just signed his will, 
when he met, at Madame de Maintenon's, the ex-queen of England. 
" I have made my will, Madame," said he : "I have purchased 
repose ; I know the impotence and uselessness of it ; we can do all 
we please as long as we are here ; after we are gone, we can do less 
than private persons ; we have only to look at what became of my 
father's, and immediately after his death too, and of those of so 
many other kings. I am quite aware of that ; but, in spite of all 
that, it was desired ; and so, Madame, you see it has been done ; 
come of it what may, at any rate I shall not be worried about it 
any more." It was the old man yielding to the entreaties and 
intrigues of his domestic circle ; the judgment of the king remained 
steady and true, without illusions and without prejudices. 

Death was coming, however, after a reign which had been so Last days 
long, and had occupied so much room in the world, that it caused °}. ^^^ 
mistakes as to the very age of the king. He was seventy-seven, he 
continued to work with his ministers ; the order so long and so 
firmly established was not disturbed by illness any more than it had 
been by the reverses and sorrows of late. He said to Madame de 
Maintenon once, " What consoles me for leaving you, is that it will 
not be long before we meet again." She made no reply. " What 
will become of you ?" he added : " you have nothing." " Uo not 
think of me," said she : " I am nobody ; think only of God.' He 



444 History of France. 

said farewell to her : she still remained a little while in his room 

and went out when he was no longer conscious. She had given 

away here and there the few moveables that belonged to her, and 

now took the road to St, Cyr. On the steps she met Marshal Vil- 

leroy : " Good bye, marshal," she said curtly and covered up her 

face in her coifs. He it was who sent her news of the king to the 

last moment. The duke of Orleans, on becoming regent, went to 

see her and took her the patent (iDrevet) for a pension of sixty 

thousand livres, " which her disinterestedness had made necessary 

for her," said the preamble. It was paid her up to the last day of 

her life. History makes no further mention of her name ; she 

never left St. Cyr. Thither the czar Peter the Great, when he 

visited Paris and France, went to see her ; she was confined to her 

bed ; he sat a little while beside her. " What is your malady ? " 

he asked her through his interpreter, "A great age," answered 

Madame de Maintenon, smUing. He looked at her a moment in 

. _ .„.- silence; then, closing the curtains, he went out abruptly. The 

Deatli of memory he would have called up had vanished. The woman on 

^^^"^^ whom the great king had, for thirty years, heaped confidence and 

tenon affection was old, forgotten, dying ; she expired at St. Cyr on the 

(Apiil 15). 15th of April, 1719, at the age of eighty-three. 

She had left the king to die alone. He was in the agonies ; the 
prayers in extremity were being repeated around him; the cere- 
monial recalled him to consciousness. He joined his voice with the 
voices of those present, repeating the prayers with them. Already 
the court was hurrying^ to the duke of Orleans ; some of the more 
confident had repaired to the duke of Maine's ; the king's servants 
were left almost alone atound his bed ; the tones of the dying man 
were distinctly heard above the great number of priests. He 
several times repeated : Nunc et in hora mortis. Then he said 
quite loud : " my God, come Thou to help me, haste Thee to 
succour me." Those were his last words. He expired on Sunday, 
thfc 1st of September, 1715, at eight a.m. N"ext day he would 
Death of liave been seventy-seven years of age and he had reigned seventy- 
the king two of them. 

( ep . I). j^ spite of his faults and his numerous and culpable errors, 
Louis XIV. had lived and died like a king. The slow and grievous 
agony of olden France was about to begin. 



Colberts Budget. 



445 



TABLE I.— COLBERT'S BUDGET EOR THE YEAR 1662. 



Debitor's Account. 

livres s. ds. 

Eoyal honsehold 7,000,000 

The army (at the rate of 600,000 

livres per month) 7, 200,000 

Regiment of the French Guards 969,e41 

Eegiment of the Swiss Guards 1,224,810 6 8 

Light Dragoons (chevau-legers) 

of the Guard 223,205 

The two companies of Muske- 
teers 314,952 

PuWic Buildings 1,600,000 

Garrison expenses (as per es- 
timate) 2,000,000 

Navy estimates 2,000,000 

The hulks (galeres) 400,000 

Fortifications 300,000 

Extraordinary expenses of the 

Koyal Famdy 300,000 

Ambassadors 250,000 

Salary of government oflScers. 1,200,000 

Foreign pensions 300,000 

Extraordinary pensions, etc. to 
the officers of the King's 
household 200,000 

Payment to the Archduke of 

Inspriick 1,000,000 

Artillery and purchase of am- 
munition 300,000 

Salary of the Marshals of 

France 200,000 

Gratuities to members of the 

council, etc 300,000 

Exti'aordinary and unforeseen 

expenses 1,317,191 13 4 

Total... 30,000.000 livres 



Creditor's Accodnt. 



Qahelles (salt tax) 

Les cinq grosses fermesf 

Aides (wine and spirit taxes). 

Tolls 

Coiivoi de Bordeauxf 

Salt-taxf or Languedoe, Lyon- 
nais, Provence, Dau- 
phin^, and customs of 
Valence 

Overtax for Lyons 

Ditto (quarantieme .) 

Subvention of Rouen. 

Patents of Languedoc, Arzao 
and Bouille 

Tax of thirty-fl.ve sous raised 
at Brouage 

Faulette 

Farming of one-third of the 
domains and aUenated 
rights 

Salt-tax in RoussUlon 

Domains in ditto 

Salt-tax and domains of Metz, 
Toul and Verdun 

Farming of the King's do- 
mains in Alsace 

Post office 

Tallies (poll-tax and property- 
tax 



livres B. ds. 
13,600,000 
3,650,000 
5,211,000 
4,720,900 
3,600,000 



5,570,000 
60,000 
120,000 
120,000 



566,000 



335,000 
800,000 



1,000,000 

10,000 

100,000 

277,000 

80,000 
100,000 

45,768,807 



Total... 87,587,807 livres. 



* This name was given to the custom-house 
dues levied collectively on the provinces of He 
de France, Normandy, Picardy, Champagne, 
Bourgogne, Bresse and Bugey, Bourbonnais, 
Poitou, Anjou, Maine and Touraine, which had 
formed together a kind of Zollverein. 

t A tax levied on consideration of the protec- 
tion given by the King's navy to the merchant 
ships tradirig between Bordeaiix and foreiP'Ti 
parts. 



N.B. This taWe is taken from Mr. Ch^ruel's excellent DicHonnaire historique dea institutUmi, 
moBurs et coutumes de la France, pubUshed by Messrs. Hachetle. 



TABLE II.— A CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OP THE FRENCH ARMY, 
DOWN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION. 

1124. First instance of a permanent military force established. 

1191. The supreme command of the army given to the constable of France, 

who has under his orders two marshals, besides the grand-master 

of the cross-bowmen. 
1439. The cavalry of the gens d'a/rmes (compagnies d'ordonnance) instituted ; 

these companies, fifteen in number, are of 100 lances (600 men) 

each. 
1445. The Francs-arcTiers or Francs-taupins (infantry) instituted. The 

name taupins is derived from the Low Latin talpa/rius, meaning a 

man who works underground, like a mole. Scotch archers appointed 

as part of the king's body-guard. 



44^ History of France. 

1478. The company of the gentilshommes-a-hec-de-corlin (infantry) or« 

ganized. 
1496. A body of Swiss soldiers, 127 in number, added to the king's house- 
hold troops (Les cent homm?s de guerre Swisses de la garde dii- Rni). 
1532. Provincial legions instituted by Francis I. These corps, seven in all, 

are of 6000 men each. 
1544. A colonel-general of the infantry appointed. 
1558. Creation of a corps of carahins (light cavalry). — Marshal de Cosse- 

Brissao forms a regiment of dragoons destined to fight both on 

horseback and on foot. 
1563. The provincial legions formed into regiments. The most ancient of 

these corps are the regiments of Picardy, Champagne, Navarre, 

Piedmont. Institution of the French guards. 
1571 Appointment of a colonel-general of the Swiss and Grison troops in 

the French service. 
1609. Gens d'armes of the king's body-guard instituted (cavalry). 
1619. First nomination of a minister of war. 
1612 The company of grey musketeers instituted. (Thus called from the 

colour of their horses. 
1627. The office of constable of France suppressed. 

1630. Formation of a body of chevau-legers (household troops, light cavalry). 
1635. The musketeers and carbineers-- formed into regimenta. 
1660. A company of black musketeers instituted 

1665 Generals of brigade appointed for the cavalry. 

1666 Louvois, minister of war. 

1668. Generals of brigade appointed for the infantry. 

1670. Establishment of the gai'des marines at Brest, Rochefort and Toulon. 

1671. Foundation of the Hotel des Invalides. Introduction of the bayonet. 

Regiments of fusiliers formed. 

1 672. Companies of grenadiers introduced into each regiment. 

1686. Grenadiers on foot and on horseback raised as part of the household 

troops. 
1679-1707. Vauban reorganizes military engineering. 
1682. Military schools established (ecoles de cadets). 
1691. First company of hussards raised. 

1693. The order of Saint-Louis created as a decoration for military services. 
1734. Marshal de Saxe forms a body of 100 Uhlans (lancers). 
1748. Engineering schools established at Mezieres. 
1751. A military school established at Paris. 
1764. The Gardes Frangaises arranged into six battalions, each containing 

half a company of grenadiers (50 men), and five companies of 

fusiliers (120 men each). 
1776. The cent-Suisses disbanded. Count de Saiat Germain, minister of war, 

introduces many reforms. 
1789. Eeform of the army. — Creation of the national guard. 




CHAPTEE XIII. 

LOUIS XV., THE REGENCY, CARDINAL DUBOIS AND CARDINAL DE FLEURT. 
(1715—1748). 

Under Henry IV., under Eichelien, under Louis XIV., events 
found quite naturally their guiding hand and their centre ; men as 
"well as circumstances formed a group around the head of the nation, 
whether king or minister, to thence unfold themselves quite clearly jjgg^^ ^f 
before the eyes of posterity. Starting from the reign of Louis XV. the French 
the nation has no longer a head, history no longer a centre ; at the JJ^oi^archy, 
same time with a master of the higher order, great servants also faU. 
the French monarchy ; it all at once collapses, hetraying thus the 
exhaustion of Louis XIV.'s latter years ; decadence is no longer 
veiled by the remnants of the splendour which was still reflected 
from the great king and his great reign j the glory of olden France 
descends slowly to its grave. At the same time, and in a future 
as yet obscured, intellectual progress begins to dawn ; new ideas of 
justice, of humanity, of generous equity towards the masses germi- 
nate sparsely in certain minds ; it is no longer Christianity alone 
that inspires them, though the honour is reflected upon it in a 
general way and as regards the principles with which it has silently 
permeated modern society, but they who contribute to spread them 
refuse with indignation to acknowledge the source whence they 
have drawn them. Intellectual movement no longer appertains 
exclusively to the higher classes, to the ecclesiastics, or to the mem- 
bers of the parliaments ; vaguely as yet, and retarded by apathy iu 
the government as well as by disorder in affairs, it propagates and 



44^ History of France, 

extends itself imperceptibly pending that signal and terrinle 
explosion of good and evil which is to characterize the close of the 
eighteenth century. Decadence and progress are going on confusedly 
in the minds as well as in the material condition of the nation. 
They must be distinguished and traced without any pretence of 
separating them. 

There we have the reign of Louis XV. in its entirety. 
Regency of The regency of the duke of Orleans and the ministry of Cardinal 
of Orleans. I^^t)ois showed certain traits of the general tendencies and to a 
certain extent felt their influence ; they formed, however, a distinct 
epoch, abounding in original efforts and bold attempts, which 
remained without result but which testified to the lively reaction 
in men's minds against the courses and fundamental principles of 
the reign which had just ended, 

Louis XIY. had made no mistake about the respect which his 
last wishes were destined to meet with after his death. His will 
was as good as annulled ; it was opened, it was read, and so were 
the two codicils. All the authority was entrusted to a council of 
regency of which the duke of Orleans was to be the head, but with- 
out preponderating voice and without power to supersede any of 
the members, all designated in advance by Louis XIY. The 
person and the education of the young king, as well as the command 
of the household troops, were entrusted to the duke of Maine. 
The will of The Parliament applauded the formation of the six councils of 
an^^led f^^^ig^^ affairs, of finance, of war, of the marine, of home or the 
interior, of conscience or ecclesiastical affairs ; the Regent was 
entrusted with the free disposal of graces : " I want to be free for 
good," said he, adroitly repeating a phrase from Telemaque, " I 
consent to have my hands tied for evil." 

The victory was complete. Not a shred remained of Louis 
XIV. 's will. The duke of Maine, confounded and humiliated, 
retired to his castle of Sceaux, there to endure the reproaches of 
his wife. The king's affection and Madame de Maintenon's clever 
tactics had not suf&ced to found his power ; the remaining vestiges 
of his greatness were themselves about to vanish before long in 
their turn. 

On the 12th of September, the little king held a bed of justice ; 
his governess, Madame de Ventadour, sat alone at the feet of the 
poor orphan, abandoned on the pinnacle of power. All the decisions 
of September 2 were ratified in the child's name. Louis XIV. 
had just descended to the tomb without pomp and without regret. 
The joy of the people broke out indecently as the funeral train 
passed by ; the nation had forgotten the glory of the great king, it 




THE REGENT ORLEANS. 



Liberal measures. 449 

lemembered only the evils which had for so long oppressed it 
during his reign. 

The new councils had already heen constituted, when it wns 
discovered that commerce had been forgotten ; and to it was 
assigned a seventh body. How singular are the monstrosities of 
inexperience ! At the head of the council of finance a place was The duke 
found for the duke of l^oailles, active in mind and restless in cha- w-„^iigg 
racter, without any fixed principles, an adroit and a shameless 
courtier, strict in all religious observances under Louis XIY. and a 
notorious debauchee under the Regency, but intelligent, insolent, 
ambitious, hungering and thirsting to do good if he could, but evil 
if need were and in order to arrive at his ends. His uncle. Cardinal 
jS'oailles, who had been but lately threatened by the court of Eome 
with the loss of his hat, and who had seen himself forbidden to 
approach the dying king, was now president of the council of con- 
science. Marshal d'Huxelles, one of the negotiators who had 
managed the treaty of Utrecht, was at the head of foreign affairs. 
The Eegent had reserved to himself one simple department, the 
Academy of Sciences. "I quite intend," said he gaily, " to ask the 
king, on his majority, to let me stiU be secretary of State of the 
Academy." 

The Eegent's predilection, consolidating the work of Colbert, 
contributed to the development of scientific researches, for which 
the neatness and clearness of French thought rendered it thence- 
forth so singularly well adapted. 

The gates of the prison were meanwhile being thrown open to The Bas- 
many a poor creature; the Jansenists left the Bastille; others, who thrown 
had been for a long time past in confinement, were still ignorant open, 
of the grounds for their captivity, which was by this time forgotten 
by everybody. For a while the Protestants thought they saw their 
advantage in the clemency with which the new reign appeared to 
be inaugurated, and began to meet again in their assemblies ; the 
Eegent had some idea of doing them justice, re-establishing the 
edict of Nantes and reopening to the exiles the doors of their 
country, but his councillors dissuaded him, the more virtuous, like 
St. Simon, from catholic piety, the more depraved from policy and 
indifference. However, the lot of the Protestants remained under 
the Eegency less hard than it had been under Louis XIV. and 
than it became under the duke of Bourbon. The chancellor, Yoysin, j)»^g.Tjes. 
had just died. To this post the Eegent summoned the attorney- seauchan- 
general, D'Aguesseau, beloved and esteemed of all, learned, eloquent, ^^^^^'^' 
virtuous, but too exclusively a man of parliament for the functions 
v?hich had been confided to him. 

G a 



45'^ History of France. 

The new system of government, as yet untried and coniBded to 
men for the most part little accustomed to affairs, had to put up 
■^vith the most formidable difficulties and to struggle against the 
most painful position. The treasury was empty and the country 
exhausted ; the army was not paid and the most honourahle men, 
such as the duke of St. Simon, saw no other remedy for the evils 
of the State hut a total bankruptcy and the convocation of the 
States-general. Both expedients were equally repugnant to the 
duke of Orleans. The duke of Noailles had entered upon a 
course of severe economy ; the king's household was diminished, 
twenty-five thousand men were struck off the strength of the 
army, exemption from talliage for six years was promised to all 
such discharged soldiers as should restore a deserted house and 
should put into cultivation the fields lying waste. At the same 
time something was being taken off the crushing weight of the 
taxes and the State was assuming the charge of recovering them 
directly, without any regard for the real or supposed advances of the 
Eeceivers-general ; their accounts were submitted to the revision of 
the brothers Paris, sons of an innkeeper in the Dauphinese Alps, 
who had made fortunes by military contracts and were all four 
reputed to be very able in matters of finance. They were likewise 
commissioned to revise the bills circulating in the name of the 
State, in other words, to suppress a great number without re-im- 
bursement to the holder, a sort of bankruptcy in disguise, which 
did not help to raise the public credit. At the same time also a 
chamber of justice, instituted for that purpose, was prosecuting 
the tax-farmers {traitantf), as Louis XIV. had done at the com- 
mencement of his reign, during the suit against Fouquet. The 
resources derived from this measure, as well as from the revision 
of the State's debts, remaining very much below expectation, the 
deficit went on continually increasing. In order to re-establish 
the finances, the duke of !N"oailles demanded fifteen years' imprac- 
ticable economy, as chimerical as the increment of the revenues on 
which he calculated ; and the duke of Orleans finally suffered 
himself to be led away by the brilliant prospect which was flashed 
before his eyes by the Scotsman Law, who had now for more than 
two years been settled in France. 

Law, born at Edinburgh in 1671, son of a goldsmith, had for a 
long time been scouring Europe, seeking in a clever and systematic 
course of gambling a source of fortune for himself and the first 
foundation of the great enterprises he was revolving in his singu- 
larly inventive and daring mind. Passionately devoted to the 
financial theories he had conceived, Law had expounded them to 



Financial speculations. 45'! 

all the princes of Europe in succession. " He says tLat of all the 
persons to whom he has spoken about his system he has found but 
two who apprehended it, to wit, the king of Sicily and my son," 
wrote Madame, the Eegent's mother. Victor Amadeo, however, 
had rejected Law's proposals. " I am not powerful enough to 
ruin myself," he had said. Law had not been more successful 
with Louis XIY. The Regent had not the same repugnance for 
novelties of foreign origin ; so soon as he was in power, he 
authorised the Scot to found a circulating and discount bank 
{bavque de circulation et d'escompte), which at once had very great 
success and did real service. Encouraged by this first step, Law His bank- 
reiterated to the Eegent that the credit of bankers and merchants ^°Ssys em. 
decupled their capital ; if the State became the universal banker 
and centralized all the values in circulation, the public fortune 
would naturally be decupled. A radically false system, fated to 
plunge the State and consequently the whole nation into the risks 
of speculation and trading without the guarantee of that activity, 
zeal and prompt resolution which able men of business can import 
into their private enterprises. The system was not as yet applied ; 
the discreet routine of the French financiers was scared at such 
risky chanceSj the pride of the great lords sitting in the council 
was shocked at the idea of seeing the State turning banker, perhaps 
even trader. St. Simon maintained that what was well enough for 
a free State could not take place under an absolute government. 
Law went on, however; to his bank he had just added a great 
company. The king ceded to him Louisiana, which was said to be 
rich in gold and silver mines superior to those of Mexico and Peru. 
People vaunted the fertility of the soil, the facility ofi'ered for trade 
by the extensive and rapid stream of the Mississippi ; it was by the 
name of that river that the new company was called at first, though 
it soon took the title of Gompagnie d' Occident, when it had obtained 
the privilege of trading in Senegal and in Guinea ; it became the 
Gompagnie des hides, on forming a fusion with, the old enterprises 
which worked the trade of the East. Eor the generality, and in 
the current phraseology, it remained the Mississippi ; and that is ''The Mis- 

the name it has left in history. !N"ew Orleans was beginning to f issippi " 

dtiooIg 
arise at the mouth of that river. Law had bought Belle-Isle-en- 

Mer, and was constructing the port of Lorient. 

Tlie Eegent's councillors were scared and disquieted; the 

chancellor proclaimed himself loudly against the deception or 

illusion which made of Louisiana a land of promise : he called to 

mind that Crozat had been ruined in searching for mines of the 

precious metals there. This opposition, resulting from the purest 

G G 2 



/1 5 2 History of France. 

motives, caused his temporarj'' disgrace ; lie was ordered by the 
Kegeut to give up the seals, which were entrusted to d'Argenson. 
The die had been cast and the duke of Orleans outstripped Law 
Financial himself in the application of his theories. A company, formed 
sc emes, gg(.j.gtly and protected by the new keeper of the seals, had bought 
up the general farmings {fermes generales), that is to say, all the 
indirect taxes, for the sum of forty-eight million fifty-two thousand 
livres ; the Gompagnie des hides re-purchased them for fifty-two 
millions ; the general receipts were likewise conceded to it, and 
Law's bank was proclaimed a Royal Bank ; the Company's shares 
already amounted to the supposed value of all the coin circulating 
in the kingdom, estimated at seven or eight hundred millions. 
Law thought he might risk everything in the intoxication which 
had seized all France, capital and province. He created some 
fifteen hundred millions of new shares, promising his shareholders 
a dividend of 12 per cent. From all parts silver and gold flowed 
into his hands ; everywhere the paper of the bank was substituted 
for coin. The delirium had mastered all minds. The street called 
Quincampoix, for a long time past devoted to the operations of 
bankers, had become the usual meeting-place of the greatest lords 
as well as of discreet burgesses. It had been found necessary to 
close the two ends of the street with gates, open from six a.m. to 
nine p.m. ; every house harboured business agents by the hundred ; 
the smallest room was let for its weight in gold. The workmen 
who made the paper for the bank-notes could not keep up with the 
consumption. The most modest fortunes suddenly became colossal, 
lacqueys of yesterday were millionaires to-morrow ; extravagance 
followed the progress . of this outburst of riches, and the price of 
provisions followed the progress of extravagance. 

This extraoi'dinary financial delusion did not, could not last. Law 
had brought with him to France a considerable fortune ; he had 
scarcely enough to live upon when he retired to Venice, where he 
died some years later (1729), convinced to the last of the utility of 
his system, at the same time that he acknowledged the errors he 
had committed in its application. 

Throughout the successive periods of intoxication and despair 

caused by the necessary and logical development of Law's scheme, 

the duke of Orleans had dealt other blows and directed other 

aff"airs of importance. Easy-going, indolent, often absorbed by his 

and tlte pleasures, the Regent found no great difficulty in pvitting up with 

legitima- the exaltation of the legitimatized princes ; it had been for him 

J^Ia^c sufficient to wrest authority from the duke of Maine, he let him 

enjoy the privileges of a prince of the blood. "I kept silence 



Intrigues of the duchess of Maine. 453 

duTin<T tlie king's lifetime," he would say ; " I ■will not be mean 

enough to break it now he is dead." But the duke of Bourbou, 
heir of the House of Conde, fierce in temper, violent in his hate, 
greedy of honours as well as of money, had just arrived at man's The duke 
estate, and was wroth at sight of the bastards' greatness. He ?f -Bourbon 
drew after him the count of Charolais his brother, and the prince ^t the 
of Conti his cousin : on the 22nd of April, 1716, all three presented greatness 
to the king a request for the revocation of Louis XIV.'s edict t^r^g^ 
declaring his legitimatized sons princes of the blood and capable of 
succeeding to the throne. 

The Regent saw the necessity of firmness. '• It is a maxim," 
he declared, " that the king is always a major as regards justice ; 
that which was done without the states-general has no need of 
their intervention to be undone. The decree of the council of 
regency, based on the same principles, suppressed the right of suc- 
cession to the crown, and cut short all pretensions on the part of 
the legitimatized princes' issue to the rank of princes of the blood j 
the rights thereto were maintained in the case of the duke of Maine 
and the count of Toulouse, for their lives, by the bounty of the 
Eegent. 

In the excess of her indignation and wrath the duchess of Maine Conspirat 
determined not to confine herself to reproaches. She had passed of Cella- 
her life in elegant entertainments, in sprightly and frivolous intel- 
lectual amusements ; ever bent on diverting herself, she made up her 
mind to taste the pleasure of vengeance, and set on foot a con- 
spiracy, as frivolous as her diversions. The object, however, was 
nothing less than to overthrow the duke of Orleans, and to confer 
the regency on the king of Spain, Philip V., with a council and a 
lieutenant, who was to be the duke of Maine. 

Some scatter-brains of great houses were mixed up in the affair : 
MM. de Richelieu, de Laval, and de Pompadour ; there was secret 
coming and going between the castle of Sceaux and the house of the 
Spanish ambassador, the prince of Cellamare ; M. de Malezieux, the 
secretary and friend of the duchess, drew up a I'orm of appeal from 
the Trench nobility to Philip Y., but nobody had signed it or 
thought of doing so. They got pamphlets written by Abbe Brigault, 
whom the duchess had sent to Spain ; the mystery was profound 
and all the conspirators were convinced of the importance of their 
manoeuvres ; every day, however, the Eegent was informed of them 
by his most influential negotiator with foreign countries, Abbe 
Dubois, his late tutor and the most depraved of all those who were 
about him. Able and vigilant as he was, he was not ignorant of 
any single detail of the plot, and was only giving the conspirators 



4S4 History of France. 

time to compromise themselves. AtJast, just as a young a'bbe, 

Porto Carrero, was starting for Spain, carrying important papers, 

he was arrested at Poitiers and his papers were seized. Next day, 

Dec. 7, 1718, the prince of Cellamare's house was visited and the 

streets were lined with troops. 

At six a.m. the king's men entered the duke of Maine's house. 

The Regent had for a long time delayed to act, as if he wasted to 

leave everybody time to get away ; but the conspirators were too 

The duke careless to take the trouble. The duchess was removed to Dijon, 

and within the government and into the very house of the duke of 

Maine Bonrbon her nephew, which was a very bitter pill for her. The 

arrested, duke of Maine, who protested his innocence and his ignorance, was 

detained in the castle of Dourlans in Picardy. Cellamare received 

his passports and quitted Finance. The less illustrious conspirators 

were all put in the Bastille ; the majority did not remain there 

long and purchased their liberty by confessions, which the duchess 

of Maine ended by confirming. 

The only serious result of Cellamare's conspiracy was to render 

imminent a rupture with Spain. From the first days of the regency 

the old enmity of Philip V. towards the duke of Orleans and the 

secret pretensions of both of them to the crown of France, in case 

of little Louis XV.'s death, rendered the relations between the two 

courts thorny and strained at bottom, though still perfectly smooth 

in appearance. It was from England that Abbe Dubois urged the 

Character Eegent to seek support. Dubois, born in the very lowest position, 

of the Abbe ,^^i^ endowed with a soul worthy of his origin, was "a little, lean 
Dubois. . 

man, wire-drawn, with a light-coloured wig, the look of a weasel, a 

clever expression," says St. Simon, who detested him : " all vices 
struggled within him for the mastery ; they kept up a constant hub- 
bub and strife together. Avarice, debauchery, ambition were his 
gods ; perfidy, flattery, slavishness his instruments ; and complete 
unbelief his comfort. He excelled in low intrigues ; the boldest lie 
was second nature to him, with an air of simplicity, straightforward- 
ness, sincerity, and often bashfulness." In spite of all these vices, 
and the depraving influence he had exercised over the duke of 
Orleans from his earliest youth, Dubois was able, often far-sighted, 
and sometimes bold ; he had a correct and tolerably practical mind. 
Madame, who was afraid of him, had said to her son on the day of 
his elevation to power : " I desire only the welfare of the State and 
your own glory ; I have but one request to make for your honour's 
sake, and I demand your word for it, that is, never to employ that 
scoundrel of an Abbe Dubois, the greatest rascal in the world, and 
one who would sacrifice the State and you to the slightest interest." 




CARDINAL DUBOIS. 



Peter the Great in France. 455 

The Eegent promised ; yet a few months later and Dubois waa 
Church-councillor of State,- and his growing influence with the 
prince placed him, at first secretly and before long openly, at the 
head of foreign affairs. 

Inspired by Dubois, weary of the weakness and dastardly inca- 
pacity of the Pretender, the Regent consented to make overtures 
to the king of England. The Spanish nation was favourable to 
France, but the king was hostile to the Eegent ; the English loved 
neither France nor the Regent, but their king had an interest in 
severing France from the Pretender for ever. Dubois availed 
himself ably of his former relations with Lord Stanhope, heretofore 
commander of the English troops in Spain, for commencing a secret 
negotiation which soon extended to Holland, still closely knit to 
England. The order of succession to the crowns of France and 
England, conformably to the peace of Utrecht, was guaranteed in 
•the scheme of treaty; that was the only important advantage to 
the Regent, who considered himself to be thus nailing the renun- 
ciation of Philip V. ; in other respects all the concessions carae from 
the side of France ; her territory was forbidden ground to the 
Jacobites, and the Pretender, who had taken refuge at Avignon on 
papal soil, was to be called upon to cross the Alps. The English 
required the abandonment of the works upon the canal of Mardyck, 
intended to replace the harbour of Dunkerque ; the Hollanders 
claimed commercial advantages. Dubois yielded on all the points, 
defending to the last with fruitless tenacity the title of king of 
France, which the English still disputed. The negotiations came 
to an end at length on the 6th of January, 1717, and Dubois wrote 
in triumph to the Regent : " I signed at midnight ; so there are you 
quit of servitude (your own master), and here am I quit of fear." 

At the moment when the signature was being put to the treaty The czar 
of the triple alliance, the sovereign of most distinction in Europe ^^lef the 
owing to the eccentric renown belonging to his personal merit, visits 
the czar Peter the Great, had just made flattering advances to France. 
France. He had some time bel'ore wished to take a trip to Paris, 
but Louis XIV. was old^ melancholy and vanquished, and had 
declined the czar's visit. The Regent could not do the same thing, 
when, being at the Hague in 1717, Peter I. repeated the expression 
of his desire. Marshal Cosse was seni to meet him, and the 
honours due to the king himself were everywhere paid to him on 
the road. A singular mixture of military and barbaric roughness 
with the natural grandeur of a conqueror and creator of an empire, 
the czar mightily excited the curiosity of the Parisians. He testified 
towards the Eegent a familiar good grace mingled with a certain 



d^6 History of France. 

superiority ; at the play, to which they went together, the czar 
asked for beer ; the Eegent rose, took the goblet which was hrought 
and handed it to Peter, who drank and, without moving, put the 
glass back on the tray which the Regent held all the while, with a 
slight inclination of the head which, however, surprised the public. 
Anecdotes At his first interview with the little king, he took up the child in 
about nim. j^^g arms and kissed him over and over again, " with an air of 
tenderness and politeness which was full of nature and nevertheless 
intermixed with a something of grandeur, equality of rank and, 
slightly, superiority of age ; for ail that was distinctly perceptible " 
One of his first visits was to the church of the Sorbonne ; when he 
caught sight of Richelieu's monument, he ran up to it, embraced 
the statue, and, " Ah ! great man," said he, "if thou wert still alive, 
I would give thee one half of my kingdom to teach me to govern 
the other." 
Political Amidst all his chatting, studying, and information-hunting, 
^^ vis°t Peter the Great did not forget the political object of his trip. He 
wantedito detach France from Sweden, her heretofore faithful ally, 
still receiving a subsidy which the czar would fain have appropriated 
to himself. Together with his own alliance he promised that of 
Poland and of Prussia. "France has nothing to fear from the 
emperor," he said : as for King George, whom he detested, " if any 
rupture should take place between him and the Regent, Russia 
would suffice to fill towards France the place of England as well as 
of Sweden." 

Thanks to the ability of Dubois, the Regent felt himself infeoffed 
to England ; he gave a cool reception to the overtures of the czar, 
"who proposed a treaty of alliance and commerce. Prussia had 
already concluded secretly with France ; Poland was distracted hy 
intestine struggles ; matters were confined to the establishment of 
amicable relations ; France thenceforth maintained an ambassador 
in Russia, and the czar accepted the Regent's mediation between 
Sweden and himself. 

Duhois was struggling everywhere throughout Europe against 
the influence of a broader, bolder, more powerful mind than his 
own, less adroit perhaps in intrigue, but equally destitute of scruples 
as to the employment of means. Alberoni had restored the finances 
and reformed the administration of Spain ; he was preparing an 
army and a fleet, meditating, he said, to bring peace to the world, 
Boli and beginning that great enterprise hy manoeuvres which tended to 
labe™^' Tiothing less than setting fire to the four corners of Europe, in thg 
name of an enfeebled and heavy-going king, and of a queen 
ambitious, adroit, and unpopular. _ He dreamed of reviving tha 



Treaty of the quadruple alliance. 457 

ascendancy of Spain in Italy, of overthrowing the protestant king 

of England, whilst restoring the Stuarts to the throne, and. of 

raising himself to the highest dignities in Church and State. He 

had already obtained, from Pope Clement XI. the cardinal's hat, 1 

disguising under pretext of war against the Turks the preparations 

he was making against Italy ; he had formed an alliance between 

Charles XII. and the czar, intending to sustain by their united 

forces the attempts of the Jacobites in England. His first enterprise, 

at sea, made him master of Sardinia within a few days ; the Spanish 

troops landed in Sicily. The emperor and Yictor Amadeo were in 

commotion ; the pope, overwhelmed with reproaches by those 

princes, wept, after his fashion, saying that he had damned himself 

by raising Alberoni to the Eoman purple ; Dubois profited by the duTjoIs 

disquietude excited in Europe by the bellicose attitude of the brings 

Spanish minister to finally draw the emperor into the alliance ^""J^^.* 

between Erance and England. He was to renounce his pretensions 

to Spain and the Indies, and give up Sardinia to Savoy, which was 

to surrender Sicily to him. The succession to the duchies of Parma 

and Tuscany was to be secured to the children of the queen of 

Spain. Erance and England left Holland and Savoy free to accede 

to the treaty ; but, if Spain refused to do so voluntarily within a 

specified time, the allies engaged to force her thereto by arms. 

The Hollanders hesitated : the Spanish ambassador at the Hague 
had a medal struck representing the quadruple alliance as a coach 
on the point of falling, because it rested on only three wheels. 
Certain advantages secured to their commerce at last decided the 
states-general. Victor Amadeo regretfully acceded to the treaty 
which robbed him of Sicily : he was promised one of the Eegent's 
daughters for his son. 

Alberoni refused persistently to accede to the great coalition 
brought about by Dubois. The hope of a sudden surprise in 
England, on behalf of the Jacobites, had been destroyed by the 
death of the king of Sweden, Charles XII., killed on the 12th of 
December, 1718, at Ereiderishalt, in i^orway ; the flotilla equipped 
by Alberoni for Chevalier St. George had been dispersed and beaten _ ,. 
by the elements ; the Pretender henceforth was considered to cost Alberoni 
Spain too dear; he had just been sent away from her territory at isolated, 
the moment when the conspiracy of Cellamare failed in Erance ; 
in spite of the feverish activity of his mind and the frequently 
chimerical extent of his machinations, Alberoni remained isolated 
in Europe, without ally and without support. 

The treaty of the quadruple alliance had at last come to be 
definitively signed. Some days later appeared, almost at the same 



45 S History of France. 

time — the I7tli of December, 1718, and the 9th of January, 1719 
— the manifestoes of England and France, proclaiming the resolution 
of making war upon Spain, whilst Philip V., by a declaration of 
December 2oth, 1718, pronounced all renunciations illusory, and 
proclaimed his right to the throne of France in case of the death of 
Louis XV. At the same time he made an appeal to an assembly 
of the states-general against the tyranny of the Eegent, " who was 
making alliances," he said, " with the enemies of the two crowns." 
Preparations for war were actively carried on in France ; the 
prince of Conti was nominally at the head of the army. Marshal 
Berwick was entrusted with the command. He accepted it, in spite 
of his old connexions with Spain, the benefits which Philip V. had 
heaped upon him, and the presence of his eldest son, the duke of 
Liria, in the Spanish ranks. Fontarabia, St. Sebastian and the 
castle of Urgel fell before long into the power of the French ; 
another division burnt, at the port of Los Pasages, six vessels which 
chanced to be on the stocks ; an English squadron destroyed those 
at Centera and in the port of Vigo. Everywhere the depots were 
committed to the flames : this cruel and destructive war against an 
enemy whose best troops were fighting far away and who was unable 
to ofi'er more than a feeble resistance, gratified the passions and the 
interests of England rather than of France. 

Alberoni attempted in vain to create a diversion by hurling into 
His fall ^^^ midst of France the brand of civil war. Philip V. was beaten 
at home as well as in Sicily. The Eegent succeeded in introducing 
to the presence of the king of Spain an unknown agent, who 
managed to persuade the monarch that the cardinal was shirking 
his responsibility before Europe, asserting that the king and queen 
had desired the war and that he had confined himself to gratifying 
their passions. The duke of Orleans said, at the same time, quite 
openly, that he made war not against Philip V. or against Spain 
but against Alberoni only. Lord Stanhope declared, in the name 
of England, that no peace was possible, unless its preliminary were 
the dismissal of the pernicious minister. 

The cardinal's fall was almost as speedy as that which he had 
"but lately contrived for his enemy the princess des Ursins. On 
the 4th of December, 1719, he received orders to quit Madrid 
archbishoD "^^'i^^^i^^ eight days and Spain under three weeks. So great success 
of Cambrai. in negotiation, however servile had been his bearing, had little by 
little increased the influence of Dubois over his master. The Eegent 
knew and despised him, but he submitted to his sway and yielded 
to his desires, sometimes to his fancies. Dubois had for a long 
while comprehended that the higher dignities of the Church could 



Plague in Southern France. 459 

alone bring him to the grandeur of which he was amhitions ; he 
obtained the see of Cambrai, strange to say, through the influence 
of a Protestant king, George T. The Eegent, as well as the whole 
court, was present at the ceremony, to the great scandal of the 
people attached to religion. Dubois received all the orders on the 
the same day ; and, when he was joked about it, he brazenfacedly 
called to mind the precedent of St. Ambrose. Dubois henceforth 
cast his eyes upon the cardinal's hat, and his negotiations at Eome 
were as brisk as those of Alberoni had but lately been with the 
same purpose. 

Amidst so much defiance of decency and public morality, in the 
presence of such profound abuse of sacred things, God did not, 
nevertheless, remain without testimony, and his omnipotent justice 
had spoken. On the 21st of July, 1719, the duchess of Berry, a.D. 1719. 
eldest daughter of the Eegent, had died at the Palais-Eoyal, at J?®*!'^ ^^ 
barely twenty-four years of age ; her health, her beauty, and her ^f Berry 
wit were not proof against the irregular life she had led. Ere long (July 21). 
a more terrible cry arose from one of the chief cities of the kingdom : 
" The plague," they said, " is at Marseilles, brought, none knows 
how, on board a ship from the East." The bishop of Marseilles, 
Monseigner de Belzunce, the sheriffs Esteile and Moustier, and a 
simple officer of health. Chevalier Eoze, sufficed in the depopulated 
town for all duties and all acts of devotion. The example oi the 
prelate animated with courageous emulation — not the clergy of lazy 
and emasculated dignitaries, for they fled at the first approach of 
danger, but — the parish-priests, the vicars, and the religious orders ; 
not one deserted his colours, not one put any bound to his fatigues 
save with his life. 

Marseilles had lost a third of its inhabitants ; Aix, Toulon, Aries, ThePlaguo 

the Cevennes, the Gevaudan were attacked by the contagion ; <** '^^'^" 

. J ci ^ seilles. 

fearful was the want in the decimated towns, long deprived of every 

resource. Scarcely, however, had they escaped from the dreadful 

scourge which had laid them waste, wh'jn they plunged into excesses 

of pleasure and debauchery, as if to fly from the memories tliat 

haunted them. Scarcely was a thought given to those martyrs to 

devotion who had fallen during the epidemic ; those who survived 

received no recompense ; the Eegent, alone, offered Monseigneur de 

Belzunce the bishopric of Laon, the premier ecclesiastical peerage 

in the kingdom ; the saintly bishop preferred to remain in the 

midst of the flock for which he had battled against despair and 

death. It was only in 1802 that the city of Marseilles at last 

raised a monument to its bishop and its heroic magistrates. 

Dubois, meanwhile, was nearing the goal of all his efiorts. la 



460 History of France. 

^ , . order to obtain the cardinal's hat, he had embraced the cause of 

Dubois ' 

curries the Court of Eome, and was pushing forward the registration by 

favour Parliament of the Bull Unigenitus. The long opposition of the 
* duke of !N"oailles at last yielded to the desire of restoring peace in 
the Church. In his wake the majority of the bishops and commu- 
nities who had made appeal to the contemplated council renounced, 
in their turn, the protests so often renewed witliin the last few 
years. The Parliament was divided, but exiled to Pontoise, as a 
punishment for its opposition to the system of Law ; it found 
itself threatened with removal to Blois. Chancellor d'Aguesseau 
had vainly sought to interpose his authority ; a magistrate of the 
Grand Chamber, Perelle by name, was protesting eloquently against 
any derogation from the principles of liberty of the Gallican Church 
and of the parliaments : '* Where did you find such maxims laid 
down?" asked the chancellor angrily. "In the pleadings of the 
late Chancellor d'Aguesseau," answered the councillor icily. 
D'Aguesseau gave in his resignation to the Eegent, the Parlia- 
ment did not leave for Blois ; after sitting some weeks at Pon- 
toise, it enregistered the formal declaration of the Bull, and at last 
returned to Paris on the 20th of December, 1720. 
Is made a 0^ ^^^ 16th of July, 1721, Dubois was at last elected cardinal: 
Cardinal, it was stated that his elevation had cost eight millions of livres ; 
he became premier minister in name, after having long been so in 
fact. His reign was not long at this unparalleled pinnacle of his 
greatness ; he had been summoned to preside at the assembly of 
the clergy, and had just been elected to the French Academy, 
where he was received by Fontenelle, when a sore from which he 
had long suffered reached all at once a serious crisis ; an operation 
was indispensable, but he set himself obstinately against it ; the 
duke of Orleans obliged him to submit to it, and it was his death- 

_ , blow : the wretched cardinal expired, without having had time to 

His death. . ' , , r > o 

receive the sacraments. 

The elevation and power of Dubois had the fatal effect of lower- 
ing France in her own eyes ; she had felt that she was governed 
by a man whom she despised and had a right to despise ; this was 
a deep-seated and lasting evil, authority never recovered from the 
His ability blow thus struck at its moral influence. Dubois, however, was 

as a states- j^Qj.g able and more far-sighted in his foreign policy than the 
man. . . o xr j 

majority of his predecessors and his contemporaries were ; without 

definitively losing the alliance of Spain, reattached to the interests 

of France by a double treaty of marriage, he had managed to form 

a firm connexion with England, and to rally round France the 

European coalition but lately in arms against her. He maintained 



France in a state of dissolution. 4C1 

and made peace ingloriously ; he obtained it sometimes by mean- 
nesses in bearing and modes of acting ; he enriched himself by his 
intrigues, abroad as well as at home ; his policy none the less was 
steadfastly French, even in his relations with the court of Eome 
and in spite of his eager desire for the cardinal's hat. 

On the 2nd of December, 1723, three months and a half after A.D. lYSS. 

the death of Dubois, the duke of Orleans succumbed in his turn. ?,^^„ ^ 

the Regent 
Struck down by a sudden attack of apoplexy, whilst he was chatting (Dec. 2). 

with his favourite for the time, the duchess of Falarie, he expired 
without having recovered consciousness. Lethargized by the 
excesses of the table and debauchery of all kinds, more and more 
incapable of application and work, the prince did not preserve 
sufficient energy to give up the sort of life which had ruined him. 
All the vices thus imputed to the Eegent did not perish with him, His cha- 
when he succumbed at forty-nine years of age under their fatal 
effects. " The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft 
interred with their bones;" the Eegency was the signal for an 
irregularity of morals which went on increasing, like a filthy river, 
up to the end of the reign of Louis XY. ; the fatal seed had been 
germinating for a long time past under the forced and frequently 
hypocritical decency of the old court ; it burst out under the easy- 
going regency of an indolent and indulgent prince, himself wholly 
given to the licentiousness which he excused and authorized by his 
own example. From the court the evil soon spread to the nation ; Break-up 
religious faith still struggled within the soul, but it had for a long prench 
while been tossed about between contrary and violent opinions, it nation, 
found itself disturbed, attacked, by the new and daring ideas which 
were beginning to dawn in politics as well as in philosophy. The 
break-up was already becoming manifest, though nobody could 
account for it, though no fixed plan was conceived in men's minds. 
People devoured the memoirs of Cardinal Eetz and Madame de 
Motteville, Avhich had just appeared ; people formed from them 
their judgments upon the great persons and great events which they 
had seen and depicted. The University of Paris, under the direc- 
tion of Eollin, was developing the intelligence and lively powers of 
burgessdom : and Montesquieu, as yet full young, was shooting his 
missiles in the Lettres persa7ies at the men and the things of his 
country with an almost cynical freedom, which was as it were the 
alarum and prelude of all the liberties which he scarcely dared to 
claim, but of which he already let a glimpse be seen. Evil and 
good were growing up in confusion, like the tares and the wheat. 
For more than eighty years past France has been gathering the 
harvest cf ages ; she has not yet separated the good grain from tlie 
rubbish which too often conceals it. 



4^2 History of France, 

The bialiop of Frejus, "svho had but lately been the modest pre- 
ceptor of the king and was quietly ambitious and greedy of power, 
but without regard to his personal interests, was about to become 
Fleuryand Cardinal Fleury and to govern France for twenty years; in 1723, 
the duke of he was seventy years old. Whether from adroitness or prudence, 
Bourbon, j'jg^j.y ^^^ ^q^ all at once aspire to all-powerfulness. Assured in 
his heart of his sway over the as yet dormant will of his puj)il, he 
suffered the establishment of the duke of Bourbon's ministry, who 
was in a greater hurry to grasp the power he had so long coveted. 
He kept the list of benefices, and he alone, it was said, knew how 
to unloosen the king's tongue ; but he had not calculated upon the 
pernicious and all-powerful influence of the marchioness of Prie, 
favourite " by appointment " (attitree) to the duke. Clever, adroit, 
depraved, she aspired to govern, and chose for her minister Paris- 
Du^ernev Du.verney, one of the four Dauphinese brothers who had been 
engaged under the regency in the business of the visa, and the 
enemies as well as rivals of the Scotsman Law. 

The strictness of the views and of the character of this new 
statesman strove, in the home department, against the insensate 
lavishness of the duke, and the venal irregularities of his favourite; 
imbued with the maxims of order and regularity formerly impressed 
His ^y Colbert upon the clerks of the Treasury, and not yet completely 

schemes of efi^ced by a long interregnum, he laboured zealously to cut down 
economy, expenses and useless posts, to resuscitate and regulate commerce ; 
his ardour, systematic and wise as it was, hurried him sometimes 
into strange violence and improvidence ; in order to restore to their 
proper figure values and goods which still felt the prodigious rise 
brought about by the System, Paris-Daverney depreciated the 
coinage and put a tariff on merchandize as well as wages. The 
commotion amongst the people was great; the workmen rioted, the 
tradesmen refused to accept the legal figure for their goods; several 
men were killed in the streets, and some shops put the shutters up. 
The misery, which the administration had meant to relieve, went 
on increasing; begging was prohibited; refuges and workshops 
were annexed to the poor-houses; attempts were made to collect 
there all the old, infirm and vagabond. All this rigour was 
ineffectual; the useful object of Paris-Duverney's decrees was not 
attained. 
The Pro- Other outrages, not to be justified by any public advantage, were 

tostants -being at the same time committed against other poor creatures, for 
' a long while accustomed to severities of all kinds. Without free- 
dom, without right of worship, without assemblies, the Protestants 
had, nevertheless, enjoyed a sort of truce from their woes during 
the easy-going regency of the duke of Orleans. Amongst the 



Protestantism. 4^3 

miTnl)er of his vices Dubois did not include hypocrisy ; he had not 
persecuted the remnants of French Protestantism, enfeebled, dumb, 
but still living and breathing. Paris-Duverney and Madame de 
Prie returned to the policy of Louis XIV,, they published in 1724 
an edict which equalled in rigour the most severe proclamations of Rig-orona 
the previous reign ; it placed the peace and often the life of measures 
reformers at the mercy not only of an enemy's denunciation, but 
of a priest's simple deposition ; it destroyed all the bonds of family 
and substituted for the natural duties a barbarous and depraving 
law, but general sentiment and public opinion were no longer in 
accord with the royal proclamations. The clergy had not solicited 
the edict, tte work of an ambitious man backed up by certain 
fanatics ; they were at first embarrassed by it ; when the old 
hatreds revived and the dangerous intoxications of power had 
affected the souls of bishops and priests, the magistracy, who had 
formerly been more severe towards the reformers than even the 
superintendents of the provinces had been, pronounced on many 
points in favour of the persecuted ; thq judges were timid, the 
legislation, becoming more and more oppressive, tied their hands, 
but the bias of their minds was modified, it tended to extenuate 
and not to aggravate the effects of the edict. The law was bar- 
barous everywhere ; it was strictly carried out only at certain spots, 
owing to the zeal of the superintendents or bishops ; as usual, 
the South of France was the first to undergo all the rigours of it. 
Throughout a persecution which lasted nearly forty years, with alter- 
nations of severity and clemency, the chiefs of French Protestantism, 
Paul Eabaut, Court, and others equally distinguished, managed 
to control the often recurring desperation of their flocks. The _ . 
execution of the unhappy Galas, accused of having killed his son, of Calas. 
and the generous indignation of Voltaire cast a momentary gleam 
of light within the sombre region of prisons and gibbets. For the 
first time public opinion, at white heat, was brought to bear upon 
the decision of the persecutors. Calas was dead, but the decree of 
the Parliament of Touluuse, which had sentenced him, was quashed 
by act of the council : his memory was cleared, and the day of 
toleration for French Protestants began to glimmer, pending the 
full dawn of justice and liberty. 

The young king was growing up, still a stranger to affairs, solely 
occupied with the pleasures of the chase, handsome, elegant, with 
noble and regular features, a cold and listless expression. In the 
month of February 1725, he fell ill; for two days there was great 
danger. The duke thought himself to be threatened with the 
elevation of the House of Orleans to the throne. " I'll not be 



464 History of France. 

caught so again," he muttered between his teeth, when he came one 
night to inquire how the king was : " if he recovers, I'll have him 
married." The king did recover, but the Infanta was only seven 
years old ; the duke and Madame de Prie were looking out for a 
queen who would belong to them and would secure them the king's 
heart. Their choice fell upon Mary Leckzinska, a good, gentle, 
simple creature, without wit or beauty, twenty-two years old and 
living upon the alms of France with her parents, exiles and refugees 
at an old commandery of the Templars at "Weissenburg. Before 
this king Stanislaus had conceived the idea of marrying his 
daughter to count d'Estrees ; the marriage had failed through the 
Eegent's refusal to make the young lord a duke and' peer. The 
distress of Stanislaus, his constant begging-letters to the Court of 
France were warrant for the modest submissiveness of the princess. 
*' Madame de Prie has engaged a queen, as I might engage a valet 
to-morrow," writes Marquis d'Argenson ; " it is a pity." 

Fleury had made no objection to the marriage. Louis XV. 
accepted it, just as he had allowed the breaking-off of his union 
with the Infanta and that of Prance with Spain. Por a while the 
duke had hopes of reaping all the fruit of the unequal marriage he 
had just concluded for the king of Prance ; but the hour of his 
Disgrace of downfall had arrived ; he was ordered to quit the court and retire 
the duke of provisionally to Chantilly. Madame de Prie was exiled to her 
estates in Normandy, where she soon died of spite and anger. The 
head of the House of Conde came forth no more from the political 
obscurity which befitted his talents. At length Pleury remained 
sole master. 
Fkury jje took possession of it without fuss or any external manifesta- 

minister. ^^'^^ 'y caring only for real authority, he advised Louis XV. not to 
create any premier minister and to govern by himself, like his 
great-grandfather. The king took this advice, as every other, and 
left Pleury to govern. This was just what the bishop intended ; a 
sleepy calm succeeded the commotions which had been caused by 
the inconsistent and spasmodic government of the duke; galas and 
, silly expenses gave place to a wise economy, the real and important 
blessing of Pleury's administration. Commerce and industry 
recovered confidence ; business was developed ; the increase of the 
revenues justified a diminution of taxation ; war, Avhich was 
imminent at the moment of the duke's fall, seemed to be escaped ; 
the bishop of Prejus became Cardinal Pleury ; the court of Eome 
paid on the nail for the service rendered it by the new miniiter in 
freeing the clergy from the tax of the fiftieth impot da cinquain,- 
tieme). " Consecrated to God and kept aloof from the commerce 



State of Poland. 465 

of men," had been Eleury's expression, " the dues of tlie Church 
are irrevocable and cannot be subject to any tax whether of ratifi- 
cation or any other." The clergy responded to this pleasant exposi- 
tion of principles by a gratuitous gift of five millions. Strife ceased 
in every quarter ; France found herself at rest, without lustre as 
well as without prospect. 

It was not, henceforth, at Versailles that the destinies of Europe 
were discussed and decided. The dismissal of the Infanta had 
struck a deadly blow at the frail edifice of the quadruple alliance, 
fruit of the intrigues and diplomatic ability of Cardinal Dubois. 
The efforts made in common by Fleury and Eobert Walpole, prime 
minister of the king of England, were for a long while successful in 
maintaining the general peace ; the unforeseen death of Augustus 
of Saxony, king of Poland, suddenly came to trouble it. It was, j^ff^irs of 
thenceforth, the unhappy fate of Poland to be a constant source of Poland, 
commotion and discord in Europe. The elector of Saxony, son of 
Augustus IT., was supported by Austria and Russia ; the national " 
party in Polaiid invited Stanislaus Leckzinski ; he was elected at 
the Diet by sixty thousand men of family, and set out to take pos- 
session of the throne, reckoning upon the promises of his son-in- 
law, and on the military spirit which was reviving in France. The 
young men burned to win their spurs ; the old generals of Louis XIV. 
were tired of idleness. 

The ardour of Cardinal Fleury did not respond to that of the 
friends of King Stanislaus. Russia and Austria made an imposing 
display of force in favour of the elector of Saxony ; France sent, 
tardily, a body of fifteen hundred men ; this ridiculous reinforce- 
ment had not yet arrived when Stanislaus, obliged to withdraw 
from Warsaw, had already shut himself up ia Dantzic. The 
Austrian general had invested the place. 

News of the bombardment of Dantzic greeted the little French 
corps as they approached the fort of Wechselmunde. Their com- 
mander saw his impotence ; instead of landing his troops, he made 
sail for Copenhagen. The French ambassador at that court, Count Heroism 
Plelo, was indignant to see his countrymen's retreat, and, hastily of Count 
collecting a hundred volunteers, he summoned to him the chiefs of 
the expeditionary corps. " How could you resolve upon not fighting 
at any price % " he asked. " That is easy to say," rejoined one of 
the officers, roughly, " when you're safe in your closet." " I shall 
not be there long ! " exclaims the count, and presses them to return 
wiiAi him to Dantzic. The officer in command of the detachment, 
M. de la Peyrouse Lamotte, yields to his entreaties. They set out 
both of them, persuaded at the same time of the uselessness of their 

H H 



465 History of France. 

enterprise and of the necessity they were under, for the honour of 
France, to attempt it. Before embarking Count Plelo wrote to M. 
de Chauvelin, the then keeper of the seals : " I am sure not to 
return ; I commend to you my wife and children." Scarcely had 
the gallant little band touched land beneath the fort of "Wechsel- 
munde, when they marched up to the Russian lines, opening a way 
through the pikes and muskets in hopes of joining the besieged, 
who at the same time effected a sally. Already the enemy began 
to recoil at sight of such audacity, when M. de Plelo fell mortally 
wounded ; the enemy's battalions had hemmed in the French. La 
Peyrouse succeeded, however, in effecting his retreat, and brought 
away his little band into the camp they had established under 
shelter of the fort. For a month the French kept up a rivalry in 
courage with the defenders of Dantzic ; when at last they capitu- 
lated, on the 23rd of June, General Munich had conceived such 
esteem for their courage that he granted them leave to embark with 
arms and baggage. A few days later King Stanislaus escaped alone 
from Dantzic, which was at length obliged to surrender on the 7th 
of July, and sought refuge in the dominions of the king of Prussia. 
Some Polish lords went and joined him at Konigsberg. Partisan 
war continued still, but the arms and influence of Austria and 
Russia had carried the day; the national party was beaten in 
Poland. The pope released the Polish gentry from the oath they 
had made never to entrust the crown to a foreigner. Augustus III., 
recognised by the mass of the nation, became the docile tool of 
Russia, whilst in Germany and in Italy the Austrians found them- 
selves attacked simultaneously by France, Spain, and Sardinia. 

Marshal Berwick had taken the fort of Kehl in the month of 
December, 1733 ; he had forced the lines of the Austrians at 
Erlingen at the commencement of the campaign of 1734, and he 
had just opened trenches against Phillipsburg, when he pushed 
forward imprudently in a reconnoissance between the fires of the 
besiegers and besieged : a hall wounded him mortally, and he 
expired immediately, like Marshal Turenne; he was sixty-three. 
The duke of NoaiUes, who at once received the marshal's baton, 
succeeded him in the command of the army by agreement with 
Marshal d'Asfeldt. Philipsburg was taken after forty-eight days* 
open trenches, without Prince Eugene, aU the while within hail, 
making any attempt to relieve the town. The campaign of 1735 
hung fire in Germany. It was more splendid in Italy, where the 
outset of the war had been brilliant. Presumptuous as ever, in 
spite of his eighty-two years, Yillars had started for Italy, saying 
surrender. ^ Cardinal Fleury : " The king may dispose of Italy, I am going 



Treaty of Vienna. 467 

to conquer it for him." And, indeed, within three months, nearly 
the whole of Milaness was reduced. Cremona and Pizzighitone 
had surrendered ; but already King Charles Emmanuel was relax- 
ing his efforts with the prudent selfishness customary to his 
house. The Sardinian contingents did not arrive : the Austrians 
had seized a passage over the Po ; Villars, however, was preparing 
to force it, when a large body of the enemy came down upon him. 
The king of Sardinia was urged to retire : " That is Aot the way 
to get out of this," cried the Marshal, and, sword in hand, he 
charged at the head of the body-guard ; Charles Emmanuel fol- 
lowed his example ; the Austrians were driven in. " Sir," said 
Villars to the king, who was complimenting him, "these are the 
last sparks of my life ; thus, at departing, I take my leave of it." 

Death, in fact, had already seized his prey ; the aged marshal ^jj ^^3^ 
had not time to return to Erancf. to yield up his last breath there ; Death of 
he was expiring at Turin, when he heard of Marshal Berwick's y.^J^^^ 
death before Philipsburg ; " That fellow always was lucky," said (June 17). 
he. On the 17th of June, 1734, Yillars died, in his turn, by a 
strange coincidence, in the very room in which he had been born, 
when his father was Erench ambassador at the court of the duke 
of Savoy. 

Some days later Marshals Broglie and Coigny defeated the 
Austrians before Parma ; the general-in-chief, M. de Mercy, had 
been killed on the 19th of September; the prince of Wurtemberg, 
in his turn succumbed at the battle of Guastalla, and yet these 
successes on the part of the Erench produced no serious result. 
The Spaniards had become masters of the kingdom of I^Taples and 
of nearly all SicQy ; the Austrians had fallen back on the Tyrol, 
keeping a garrison at Mantua only. The duke of J^oailles, then 
at the head of the army, was preparing for the siege of the place, 
in order to achieve that deliverance of Italy which was even 
then the dream of Erance ; but the king of Sardinia and the queen 
of Spain were already disputing for Mantua ; the Sardinian troops 
withdrew, and it Avas in the midst of his forced inactivity that the 
duke of Noailles heard of the armistice signed in Germany. Cardinal 
Fleury, Aveary of the war which he had entered upon with regret, 
disquieted too at the new complications which he foresaw in Europe, r^* • ^ ' ^^' 
had already commenced negotiations ; the preliminaries were signed Vienn^i 
at Vienna in the month of October, 1735. (October). 

The conditions of the treaty astonished Europe. Cardinal 
Fleury had renounced the ambitious idea suggested to him by 
Chauvelin ; he no longer aspired to impose upon the emperor the 
complete emancipation of Italy, but he made such disposition as 

H H 2 



468 



History of France. 



he pleased of the States there, and reconstituted the territories 
according to his fancy. The kingdom of liTaples and the Two 
Sicilies were secured to Don Carlos, who renounced Tuscany and 
the duchies of Parma and Piaeenza. These three principalities 
were to form the appanage of duke Francis of Lorraine, betrothed 
to the archduchess Maria Theresa. There it was that France was 
to find her share of the spoil ; in exchange for the dominions 
formed for him in Italy, duke Francis ceded the duchies of 
Lorraine and Bar to king Stanislaus ; the latter formally renounced 
the throne of Poland, at the same time preserving the title of 
king and resuming possession of his property ; after him, Lorraine 
and the Barrois were to be united to the crown of France, as dower 
and heritage of that queen who had been but lately raised to the 
throne by a base intrigue, and who thus secured to her new country a 
province so often taken and retaken, an object of so many treaties 
and negotiations, and thenceforth so tenderly cherished by France. 
Peace reigned in Europe, and Cardinal Fleury governed France 
without rival and without opposition. He had but lately, like 
Richelieu, to whom, however, he did not care to be con) pared, 
triumphed over parliamentary revolt. Jealous of their ancient tra- 
ditional rights, the Parliament claimed to share with the govern- 
ment the care of Avatching over the conduct of the clergy. It w as 
on that ground that they had rejected the introduction of the 
Legend of Gregory YIL, recently canonized at Eome, and had 
sought to mix themselves up in the religious disputes excited just 
then by the pretended miracles -wrought at the tomb of deacon 
Paris, a pious and modest Jansenist, who had lately died in the 
odour of sanctity in the parish of St. Medard. The cardinal had 
ordered the cemetery to be closed, in order to cut short the strange 
spectacles presented by the conrulsionists, as they were called ; and, to 
break down the opposition of Parliament, the king had ordered, at a 
bed of justice, the registration of all the papal bulls succeeding the 
Unigcnitus. In vain had D'Aguesseau, reappointed to the chancel • 
lorship, exhorted the Parliament to yield : he had fallen in public 
esteem. A hundred and thirty-nine members received letters under 
the king's seal {lettres de cachet), exiling them to the four quarters of 
France. The Grand Chamber had been spared ; the old councillors, 
alone remaining, enregistered purely and simply the declarations of 
the keeper of the seals. Once more the Parliament was subdued, 
it had testified its complete political impotence ; the iron hand of 
Richelieu, the perfect address of Mazarin, were no longer neces- 
sary to silence it ; the prudent moderation, the reserved frigidity 
of Cardinal Fleury had sufficed for the piirpose. 



Frederick the Great. 469 

It was amidst this state of things that the death of the Emperor - « y..^ 

Charles VI. on the 20th of Octoher, 1740, occurred to tlirow Europe Death of 

into a new ferment of discord and war. Maria Theresa, the emperor's *^® ®^"" 

T36ror 
eldest daughter, was twenty-three years old, heautiful, virtuous, and Charles VI. 

of a lofty and resolute character ; her rights to the paternal heritage (O"^*- ^^)- 

had been guaranteed by all Europe. Europe, however, soon rose, about the 

almost in its entirety, to oppose them. The elector of Bavaria succession. 

claimed the domains of the House of Austria, by virtue of a will of 

Ferdinand I., father of Charles Y. The king of Poland urged the 

rights of his wife, daughter of the Emperor Joseph I. Spain put 

forth her claims to Hungary and Bohemia, appanage of the elder 

branch of the House of Austria. Sardinia desired her share in 

Italy \ Prussia had a new sovereign, who spoke but little, but was 

the first to act. 

Kept for a long while by his father in cruel captivity, always 
carefully held aloof from affairs, and, to pass the time, obliged to 
engage in literature and science, Frederick II. had ascended the u ^ ■^ns 
throne in August, 1740, with the reputation of a mind cultivated, of Prussia, 
liberal and accessible to noble ideas. Voltaire, with whom he had 
become connected, had trumpeted his praises everywhere : the first 
act of the new king revealed qualities of which Voltaire had no con- 
ception. On the 23rd of December, after leaving a masked ball, he 
started post-haste for the frontier of Silesia, where he had collected 
thirty thousand men. Without preliminary notice, without declara- 
tion of war, he at once entered the Austrian territorj% which was 
scantily defended by three thousand men and a few garrisons Before 
the end of January, 1741, the Prussians were masters of Silesia. " I 
am going, I fancy, to play your game," Frederick had said, as he set 
off, to the French ambassador : " if the aces come to me we will share." 

Meanwhile France, as well as the majority of the other nations, 
had recognized the young queen of Hungary. She had been pro- 
claimed at Vienna on the 7th of November, 1 740 ; all her father's 
States had sworn alliance and homage to her. Cardinal Fleury's 
intentions remained as yet vague and secret. Naturally and stub- 
bornly pacific, he felt himself bound by the confirmation of the 
Pragmatic-Sanction, lately renewed, at the time of the treaty of 
Vienna. And yet prudent, economizing, timid as he was, he had 
taken a liking for a man of adventurous and sometimes chimerical 
spirit. " Count Belle-Isle, grandson of Fouquet," says M. d'Argen- count 
son, " had more wit than judgment, and more fire than force, but Belle-Isle, 
he aimed very high." He dreamed of revising the map of Europe, 
and of forming a zone of small States destined to protect France 
against the designs of Austria. Louis XV. pretended to nothing, 



470 



History of France. 



together. 



demanded nothing for the price of his assistance ; hut France had 
heen united from time immemorial to Bavaria : she was hound to 
raise the elector to the imperial throne. If it happened afterwards, 
in the dismemherment of the Austrian dominions, that the Low 
Countries fell to the share of France, it was the natural sequel of 
past conquests of Flanders, Lorraine and the Three Bishoprics. 
Count Belle- Isle did not disturb with his dreams the calm of the 
aged cardinal ; he was modest in his military aspirations. The 
French navy was ruined, the king had hardly twenty vessels to 
France and send to sea ; that mattered little, as England and Holland took no 
Spain join p^rt in the contest; Austria was not a maritime power; Spain 
joined with France to support the elector. A body of forty thou- 
sand men was pnt under the orders of that prince, who received the 
title of lieutenant-general of the armies of the king of France. 
LoTiis XV. acted onl}^ in the capacity of Bavaria's ally and auxiliary. 
Meanwhile Marshal Belle-Isle, the king's ambassador and plenipo- 
tentiary in Germany, had just signed a treaty with Frederick II., 
guaranteeing to that monarch Lower Silesia. At the same time, a 
second French army under the orders of Marshal Maillebois entered 
Germany ; Saxony and Poland came into the coalition. The king 
of England, George II., faithful to the Pragmatic- Sanction, hurry- 
ing over to Hanover to raise troops there, found himself threatened 
by Maillebois, and signed a treaty of neutrality. The elector had 
been proclaimed, at Lintz, archduke of Austria : nowhere did the 
Franco-Bavarian army encounter any obstacle. The king of Prussia 
was occupying Moravia ; Upper and Lower Austria had been con- 
quered without a blow, and by this time the forces of the enemy 
were threatening Vienna. The success of the invasion was like a 
dream, but the elector had not the wit to profit by the good fortune 
which was oifered him. 

A few weeks had sufficed to crown the success ; less time sufficed 
to undo it. On flying from Vienna, Maria Theresa had sought 
Hungary, refuge in Hungary ; the assembly of the Estates held a meeting at 
Presburg; there she appeared dressed in mourning, holding in her 
arms her son, scarce six months old. Already she had known how 
to attach the magnates to her by the confidence she had shown 
them ; she held out to them her child ; " I am abandoned of my 
friends," said she in Latin, a language still in use in Hungary 
amongst the upper classes ; " I am pursued by my enemies, 
attacked by my relatives ; I have no hope but in your fidelity and 
courage ; we — my son and I — look to you for our safety." 

The palatines scarcely gave the queen time to finish ; already the 
sabres were out of the sheaths and flashing above their heads. 



Maria 

Theresa 

in 



England and Germany. 47 1 

Count Bathyany was the first to shout : " Moriamur pro rege nostro 
Maria Theresa 1" The same shout was repeated everywhere; 
Maria Theresa, restraining her tears, thanked her defenders with 
gesture and voice ; she was expecting a second child before long : 
" I know not," she wrote to her mother-in-law the duchess of Lor- 
raine, "if I shall have a town left to he confined in." Hungary 
rose, like one man, to protect her sovereign against the excess of 
her misfortunes ; the same spirit spread before long through the 
Austrian provinces ; bodies of irregulars, savage and cruel, formed 
at all points, attacking and massacring the French detachments they 
encountered, and giving to the war a character of ferocity which 
displayed itself with special excess against Bavaria. Count Segur, 
besieged in Lintz, was obliged to capitulate on the 26th of January, » 

and the day after the elector of Bavaria had received the imperial 
crown at Frankfurt under the name of Charles VII. — February 12, 
1742— the Austrians, under the orders of General KhevenhuUer, 
obtained possession of Munich, which was given up to pillage. 

Meanwhile England bad renounced her neutrality : the general Attitude 
feeling of the nation prevailed over the prudent and far-sighted land^^" 
ability of Eobert Walpole ; he succumbed, after his long ministry, 
full of honours and riches ; the government had passed into warlike 
hands. The women of society, headed by the duchess of Marl- 
borough, raised a subscription of 100,000?., which they offered 
unsuccessfully to the haughty Maria Theresa. Parliament voted 
more efi"ectual aid, and English diplomacy adroitly detached the 
king of Sardinia from the allies whom success appeared to be aban- 
doning. The king of Prussia had just gained at Czezlaw an 
important victory ; next day, he was negotiating with the queen of 
Hungary. On the 11th of June the treaty which abandoned Silesia 
to Frederick II. was secretly concluded, 

Chevert still occupied Prague, with six thousand sick or wounded ; 
the prince of Lorraine had invested the place, and summoned it to 
surrender at discretion. "Tell your general," replied Chevert to 
the Austrian sent to parley, " that, if he will not grant me the 
honours of war, I will fire the four corners of Prague, and bury 
myself under its ruins." He obtained what he asked for, and went 
to rejoin Marshal Belle-Isle at Egra. People compared the retreat Retreat of 
from Prague to the retreat of the Ten Thousand ; but the truth 
came out for all the fictions of flattery and national pride. A hun- 
dred thousand Frenchmen had entered Germany at the outset of the 
war; at the commencement of the year 1743 thirty-five thousand 
soldiers, mustered in Bavaria, were nearly all that remained to with- 
stand the increasing efi'orts of the Austrians. 

Marshal Belle-Isle was coldly received at Paris. " He is much 



472 



History of France. 



inconvenienced by a sciatica," writes the advocate BarLier, "and 
cannot walk but with the assistance of two men. He comes back 
■witla grand decorations : prince of the empire, knight of the Golden 
Pleece, blue riband, marshal of France and duke. He is held 
accountable, however, for all the misfortunes that have happened to 
lis; it was spread about at Paris that he was disgraced and even exiled 
to his estate at Yernon, near Gisors. It is true, nevertheless, that he 
has several times done business with the king, whether in M. Amelot'a 
presence, on foreign affairs, or M. D'Aguesseau's, on militaiy ; but 
this restless and ambitious spirit is feared by the ministers." 

Almost at the very moment when the Austrians were occupying 
Prague and Bohemia, Cardinal Fleury was expiring, at Versailles, 
at the age of ninety. He had lived too long : the trials of the last 
years of his life had been beyond the bodily and mental strength 
of an old man elevated for the jBrst time to power at an age when 
it is generally' seen slipping from the hands of the most energetic. 
Naturally gentle, moderate, discreet, though stubborn and perse- 
vering in his views, he had not an idea of conceiving and practising 
a great policy. France was indebted to him for a long period of 
mediocre and dull prosperity, which was preferable to the evils that 
had for so long oppressed her, but as for which she was to cherish 
no remembrance and no gratitude, when new misfortunes came 
bursting upon her. 

Both court and nation hurled the same reproach at Cardinal 
Fleury ; he alone prevented the king from governing and turned 
his attention from affairs, partly from jealousy and partly from the 
old habit acquired as a preceptor, who can never see a man in one 
■who has been his pupil. When the old man died at last, as 
M. d'Argenson cruelly puts it, France turned her eyes towards 
Louis XV. " The cardinal is dead : hurrah for the king !" was the 
cry amongst the people. The monarch himself felt as if he were 
emancipated. " Gentlemen, here am I — premier minister !" said he 
to his most intimate courtiers. 

The prudent hesitation and backwardness of Holland had at last 
yielded to the pressure of England. The States-general had sent 
twenty thousand men to join the army which George II. had just 
sent into Germany. It was only on the 15th of March, 1744, that 
Louis XV. formally declared war against the king of England and 
Maria Theresa, no longer as an auxiliary of the emperor, but in his 
own name and on behalf of France. Charles VII., a fugitive, 
driven from his hereditary dominions, which had been evacuated 
by Marshal Broglie, had transported to Frankfurt his ill fortune and 
his empty titles. France alone supported in Germany a quarrel 
the weight of which she had imprudently taken upon herself' 




LOUTS XV. 



Successes of the French. 473 

The effort was too much for the resources ; the Icing's coun- A.D. 1743. 
sellers felt that it was ; the battle of Dettingen, skilfully com- ^^^)^ °^ 
menced on the 27th of June, 1743, by Marshal jSToailles, and lost ^june 27). 
by the imprudence of his nephew, the duke of Gramont, had com- 
pletely shaken the confidence of the armies ; the emperor had 
treated with the Austrians for an armistice, establishing the 
neutrality of his troops, as belonging to the empire. J^oailles 
wrote to the king on the 8th of July, " It is necessary to uphold 
this phantom, in order to restrain Germany, which would league 
against us, and furnish the English with all the troops therein, the 
moment the emperor was abandoned." It was necessary, at the 
same time, to look out elsewhere for more effectual support. The 
king of Prussia had been resting for the last two years, a curious 
and an interested spectator of the contests which were bathing 
Europe in blood, and which answered his purpose by enfeebling 
his rivals. He frankly and coolly flaunted his selfishness. " In a 
previous war with Erance," he says in his memoirs, " I abandoned 
the Erench at Prague, because I gained Silesia by that step. If 
I had escorted them to Vienna, they would never have given me 
so much." In turn, the successes of the queen of Hungary were 
beginning to disquiet him; on the 5th of June, 1744, he signed a 
new treaty with France ; for the first time Louis XY. was about 
to quit Yersailles and place himself at the head of an army. " If 
my country is to be devoured," said the king, with a levity far differ- 
ent from the solemn tone of Louis XIY., " it will be very hard on me 
to see it swallowed without personally doing my best to prevent it." 

He had, however, hesitated a long while before he started, juijitary 
Credit was given to the duchess of Chateauroux, Louis XY.'s new ardour of 
favourite, for having excited this warlike ardour in the king. ^^^' 

Ypres and Menin had already surrendered after a few days' open 
trenches ; siege had just been laid to Eurnes. Marshal IToailles 
had proposed to move up the king's household troops in order to 
make an impression upon the enemy. "If they must needs be 
marched up," replied Louis XY., " I do not wish to separate from 
my household : verhiim sap" 

The news which arrived from the army of Italy was equally 
encouraging ; the prince of Conde, seconded by Chevert, had forced 
the passage of the Alps: "There wiU come some occasion when 
we shall do as well as the Erench have done," wrote Count Campo 
Santo, who, under Don Philip, commanded the Spanish detachment ; 
*' it is impossible to do better." 

Just at that moment Louis XY. was taken suddenly iU, and a 
few day« later aU Erance was in consternation ; reports flew about 



474 



History of France. 



Illness of '^^'^ ^^^ ^^^® ^^^ despaired of. Confronted with death, the king 
Louis XV. had once more felt the religious terrors which were constantly 
of^Chateau^ intermingled with the irregularity of his life ; he had sent for the 
roux. queen, and had dismissed the duchess of Chateauroux. On 

recovering his health, he found himself threatened hy new perils, 
aggravated by his illness, and by the troubled state into which it 
had thrown the public mind. After having ravaged and wasted 
Alsace, without Marshals Coigny and Noailles having been able 
to prevent it, Prince Charles had, unopposed, struck again into 
the road towards Bohemia, which was being threatened by the 
king of Prussia. " This prince," wrote Marshal Belle-Isle on the 
13th of September, "has written a very strong letter to the king, 
complaining of the quiet way in which Prince Charles was allowed 
to cross the Rhine ; he attributes it all to his Majesty's illness, and 
complains bitterly of Marshal Noailles." And, on the 25th, to 
Count Clermont : " Here we are, decided at last ; the king is to 
start on Tuesday the 27th for Luneville, and on the 5th of October 
will be at Strasbourg. Nobody knows as yet any further than 
that, and it is a question whether he will go to Priburg or not. 
The ministers are off back to Paris. Marshal Noailles, who has sent 
for his equipage hither, asked, whether he should attend his Majesty, 
who replied 'As you please,' rather curtly. Your Highness cannot 
have a doubt about his doing so after such a gracious permission." 
Louis XV. went to the siege of Friburg, which was a long and 
a difficult one. He returned to Paris on the 13l.h of November, to 
the great joy of the people. A few days later. Marshal I5elle-Isle, 
whilst passing through Hanover in the character of negotiator, was 
arrested by order of George II., and carried to England a prisoner 
of war, in defiance of the law of nations and the protests of France. 
The moment was not propitious for obtaining the release ol a 
marshal of France and an able general. The emperor Charles VII., 
who had but lately returned to his hereditary dominions, and 
recovered possession of his capital, after fifteen months of Austrian 
CharlesVII occupation, died suddenly on the 20th of January, 1745, at forty- 
(Jan. 20). seven years of age. The face of affairs changed all at once ; the 
honour of France was no longer concerned in the struggle ; the 
grand- duke of Tuscany had no longer any competitor for the empire ; 
the eldest son of Charles VII. was only seventeen ; the queen of 
Hungary was disposed for peace. " The English ministry, which 
laid down the law for aU because it laid down the money, and 
which had in its pay, all at one time, the queen of Hungary, the 
king of Poland and the king of Sardinia, considered that there was 
everything to lose by a treaty with France and everything to gain 



AD. 1745. 
Seath of 
the em- 



Batile of Fontenoy. 475 

by arms. War continued, because it bad commenced " [Voltaire, 
Steele de Louis XF.]. 

The king of France henceforth maintained it almost alone by 
himself. The young elector of Bavaria had already found himself 
driven out of Munich, and forced by his exhausted subjects to 
demand peace of Maria Theresa. The election to the empire was 
imminent ; Maximilian- Joseph promised his votes to the grand- 
duke of Tuscany ; at that price he was re-established in his here- 
ditary doniinions. The king of Poland had rejected the advances 
of France, who offered him the title of emperor, beneath which 
Charles YII. had succumbed. Marshal Saxe bore all the brunt of ^'^"s^al 
the war. A foreigner and a protestant, for a long while under 
suspicion with Louis XV., and blackened in character by the 
French generals, Maurice of Saxony had won authority as well as 
glory by the splendour of his bravery and of his military genius. 
Combining with quite a Frencb vivacity the far-sightedness and 
the perseverance of the races of the ^orth, he had been toiling for 
more than a year to bring about amongst his army a spirit of 
discipline, a powerful organization, a contempt for fatigue as well 
as for danger. '-'At Dettingen the success of the allies was due to 
their surprising order, for they were not seasoned to war," he used 
to say. Order did not as yet reign in the army of Marshal Saxe. 
In 1 745, the situation was grave ; the marshal was attacked with 
dropsy, his life appeared to be in danger. He nevertheless com- 
manded his preparations to be made for the campaign, and, when 
Voltaire, who was one of his friends, was astounded at it, " It is no 
question of living, but of setting out," was his reply. 

The victory of Fontenoy, like that of Denain, restored the A.D. 1745. 
courage and changed the situation of France. When the king of 5^^^^® °^ 
Prussia heard of his ally's success, he exclaimed with a grin : " This (May 10), 
is about as useful to us as a battle gained on the banks of the 
Scamander." His selfish absorption in his personal and direct 
interests obscured the judgment of Frederick the Great, He, 
however, did justice to Marshal Saxe : " There was a discussion 
the other day as to what battle had reflected most honour on the 
general commanding," he wrote a long while after the battle of 
Fontenoy : " some suggested that of Almanza, others that of Turin : 
but I suggested — and everybody finally agreed — that it was un- 
doubtedly that in which the general had been at death's door 
when it was delivered." 

The fortress of Tournai surrendered on the 22nd of May ; the Brilliaat 
citadel capitulated on the 19th of June. Ghent, Bruges, Oude- ^of'^tifg^' 
narde, Dendermonde, Ostend, Nieuport, yielded one after another French. 



4/6 



History of France. 



The grand 
duke of 
Tuscany 
prclaimed 
emperor. 



fhe Pre- 
tender 
Charles 
Edward 
invades 
£ug]and. 



to the Frencli armies. In the month of February, 1746, Marshal 
Saxe terminated the campaign by taking Brussels. By the 1st of 
the previous September Louis XV. had returned in triumph to Paris. 

Henceforth he remained alone confronting Germany, which was 
neutral or had rallied round the restored empire. On the 13th of 
September, the grand duke of Tuscany had beert proclaimed 
emperor at Frankfurt under the name of Francis I. The in- 
domitable resolution of the queen his wife had triumphed ; in spite 
of the checks she suffered in the Low Countries, Maria Theresa 
still withstood, at all points, the pacific advances of the belligerents. 

On the 4th of June, the king of Prussia had gained a great 
victory at Freilberg. "I have honoured the bill of exchange 
your Majesty drew on me at Fontenoy," he wrote to Louis XV. 
A series of successful fights had opened the road to Saxony, 
Frederick headed thither rapidly; on the 18th of December he 
occupied Dresden. 

Whilst Berlin was in gala trim to celebrate the return of her 
monarch in triumph, Europe had her eyes fixed upon the unparal- 
leled enterprise of a young man, winning, courageous and frivolous 
as he was, attempting to recover by himself alone the throne of 
his fathers. For nearly three years past, Charles Edward Stuart, 
son of the Chevalier de St. George, had been awaiting in France the 
fulfilment of the promises and hopes which had been flashed before 
his eyes. Weary of hope deferred, he had conceived the idea of 
a bold stroke. " Why not attempt to cross in a vessel to the 
north of Scotland ■?" had been the question put to him by Cardinal 
Tencin, who had sometime before owed his cardinal's hat to the de- 
throned king of Great Britain. " Your presence will be enough to get 
you a party and an army, and France will be obliged to give you aid." 

Charles Edward followed this audacious counsel. Landing 
in June, 1745, in the Highlands of Scotland, he had soon found 
the clans of the mountaineers hurrying to join his standard. At 
the head of this wild army, he had in a few months gained over 
the whole of Scotland. On the 20th of September he was 
proclaimed at Edinburgh regent of England, France, Scotland and 
Ireland for his father, king James III. George II. had left Hanover ; 
the d^ke of Cumberland, returning from Germany, took the com- 
mand of the troops assembled to oppose the invader. Their success 
in the battle of Preston- Pans against General Cope had emboldened 
the Scots; at the end of December, 1745, Prince Charles Edward 
and his army advanced as far as Derby. 

It was the fate of the Stuarts, whether heroes or dastards, to see 
their hopes blasted all at once, and to drag down in their fall their 



Battles of Culloden and Raucoux. 477 

most zealous and devoted partisans. The aid, so often promised by 
France and Spain, had dwindled down to the private expeditions 
of certain brave adventurers. The duke of Eichelieu, it was said, 
was to put himself at their head. Charles Edward had already- 
been forced to fall back upon Scotland. As in 1651, at the time 
of the attempt of Charles II., England remained quite cold in the 
presence of the Scottish invasion j the duke of Cumberland was 
closely pressing the army of the mountaineers. On the 23rd of A.D. 1746. 
April, 1746, the foes found themselves face to face at Culloden, Q^^^^g^jf 
in the environs of Inverness, Charles Edward was completely (April 23). 
beaten, and the army of the Highlanders destroyed ; the prince only 
escaped either death or captivity by the determined devotion of his 
partisans, whether distinguished or obscure ; a hundred persons had 
risked their lives for him, when he finally succeeded, on the lOth, 
of October, in touching land, in Brittany, near St. Pol de Leon. 
His friends and his defenders were meanwhile dying for his cause 
on scaffold or gallows. 

The anger and severity displayed by the English Government 
towards the Jacobites were aggravated by the checks encountered 
upon the Continent by the coalition. At the very moment when 
the duke of Cumberland was defeating Charles Edward at Culloden, 
Antwerp was surrendering to Louis XV. in person : Mons, N"aDiur 
and Charleroi were not long before they fell. Prince Charles of 
Lorraine was advancing to the relief of the besieged places ; 
Marshal Saxe left open to him the passage of the Meuse : the 
French camp seemed to be absorbed in pleasures ; the most famous 
a(!tors from Paris were ordered to amuse the general and the soldiers. 
On the 10th of October, in the evening, Madame Favart came for- 
ward on the stage : To-morrow," said she, '' there will be no per- 
formance, on account of the battle : the day after, we shall have the 
honour of giving you Le Coq du Village." At the same time, the Battle of 
marshal sent the following order to the columns which were akeady /Qct. 11). 
forming on the road from St. Tron to Liege, near the village of 
Eaucoux : " Whether the attacks succeed or not, the troops wUl- 
remain in the position in which night finds them, in order to recom- 
mence the assault upon the enemy." 

The battle of October 11th left the battle-field in the hands of 
the victors, the sole result of a bloody and obstinate engagement. 
Marshal Saxe went to rest himself at Paris ; the people's enthusiasm 
rivalled and endorsed the favours shown to him by the king. 

So much luck and so much glory in the Low Countries covered, in 
the eyes of France and of Europe, the checks encountered by the 
king's armies in Italy. The campaign of 1745 had been very bril- 



4/8 History of France. 

liant. Parma, Piacenza, Montferrat, nearly all Milaness, "witli the 
exception of a few fortresses, were in the hands of the Spanish and 
French forces. The king of Sardinia had recourse to negotiation ; 
he amused the marquis of Argenson, at that time Louis XV. 's 
foreign minister, a man of honest, expansive, but chimerical views. 
At the moment when the king and the marquis believed themselves 
to be remodelling the map of Europe at their pleasure, they heard 
TheFrench that Charles Emmanuel had resumed the offensive. A French corps 
in Italy, j^^^j^ \>q&\x surprised at Asti, on the 5th of March ; thirty thousand 
Austrians marched down from the Tyrol, and the Spaniards 
evacuated Milan, A series of checks forced Marshal Maillehois to 
to effect a retreat ; the enemy's armies crossed the Var and invaded 
French territory. Marshal Belle-Isle fell hack to Puget, four 
leagues from Toulon. 

The Austrians had occupied Genoa, the faithful ally of France : 
their vengefulness and their severe exactions caused them to lose 
the fruits of their victory. The resistance of Genoa was effectual ; 
hut it cost the life of the duke of Boufflers, who was wounded in an 
engagement and died three days before the retreat of the Austrians, 
on the 6th of July, 1747. 

On the 19th of July, Common Sense Belle-Isle (Bon-Sens de 
Belle-Isle), as the Chevalier was called at court to distinguish him 
from his brother the marshal, nicknamed Imagination, attacked 
■with a considerable body of troops the Piedmontese intrenchments 
at the Assietta Pass, between the fortresses of Exilles and Fenes- 

ThGV RTG 

defeated, trelles ; at the same time, Marshal Belle-Isle was seeking a passage 
over the Stura Pass, and the Spanish army was attacking Piedmont 
by way of the Apennines. The engagement at the heights of 
Assietta was obstinate ; Chevalier Belle-Isle, wounded in both arms, 
threw himself bodily upon the palisades to tear them down with his 
teeth ; he was killed, and the French sustained a terrible defeat ; 
five thousand men were left on the battle-field. The campaign of 
Italy was stopped. The king of Spain, Philip Y., enfeebled and 
exhausted almost in infancy, had died on the 9th of July, 1746. 
The fidelity of his successor, Ferdinand VL, married to a Portu- 
guese princess, appeared doubtful ; he had placed at the head of his 
forces in Italy the marquis of Las Minas, with orders to preserve to 
Spain her only army. " The Spanish soldiers are of no more use 
to us than if they were so much cardboard," said the French troops. 
Europe was tired of the war. England avenged herself for her 
reverses upon the Continent by her successes at sea ; the French 
navy, neglected systematically by Cardinal Fleury, did not even 
suffice for the protection of commerce. The Hollanders, who had 



Peace of A ix-la- Chapelle. 4^g 

for a long while been undecided and had at last engaged in the 
struggle against France without any declaration of war, bore, in 
1747, the burthen of the hostilities. Count Lowendahl, a friend 
of Marshal Saxe's, and, like him, in the service of France, had 
taken Sluys and Sas-de-Gand ; Bergen-op-Zoom was besieged ; on 
the 1st of July, Marshal Saxe had gained, under the king's own A.D. 1747, 
eye, the battle of Lawfeldt, As in 1672, the French invasion had ,* ^®,^^ 
been the signal for a political revolution in Holland ; the aristocra- (July 2), 
tical burgessdom, which had resumed power, succumbed once more 
beneath the efforts of the popular party, directed by the House of 
Nassau and supported by England. 

Bergen-op-Zoom was taken and plundered On the 16th of Sep- 
tember. Count Lowendahl was made a marshal of France. " Peace 
is in Maestricht, sir/' was Maurice of Saxouy's constant remark to 
the king. On the 9th of April, 1748, the place was invested, 
before the thirt^'-five thousand Russians, promised to England by 
the Czarina Elizabeth had found time to make their appearance on 
the Ehine. A congress was already assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle 
to treat for peace. The Hollanders, whom the marquis of Argenson 
before his disgrace used always to call " the Ambassadors of Eng- 
land," took fright at the spectacle of Maestricht besieged ; from 
parleys they proceeded to the most vehement urgency ; and Eng- 
hmd yielded. The preliminaries of peace were signed on the 30th . 

of April ; it was not long before Austria and Spain gave in their pea e of * 

adhesion. On the 18th of October the definitive treaty was con- Aix-la- 

Ghapel'e 
eluded at Aix-la-Chapelle. France generously restored all her con- /q^^ ig), 

quests, without claiming other advantages beyond the assurance 

of the duchies of Parma and Piacenza to the Infante Don Philip, 

son-in-law of Louis XV. England surrendered to France the 

island of Cape Breton and the colony of Louisbourg, the only 

territory she had preserved from her numerous expeditions against 

the French colonies and from the immense losses inflicted upon 

French commerce. The Great Frederick kept Silesia ; the king of 

Sardinia the territories already ceded by Austria. Only France 

had made great conquests ; and only she retained no increment of 

territory. She recognized the Pragmatic Sanction in favour of 

Austria and the Protestant succession in favour of George IL 

Prince Charles Edward, a refugee in France, refused to quit the 

hospitable soil which had but lately offered so magnificent an 

asylum to the unfortunates of his house : he was, however, carrietl 

off, whilst at the Opera, forced into a carriage, and conveyed far 

from the frontier. " As stupid as the peace ! " was the bitter 

saying in the streets of Paris. 



48o 



History of France': 



It has no The peace of Aix-la-Cliapelle had a graver defect than that of 
conditions fruitlessness ; it was not and could not be durable. England was 
maneace <^^^cited, ambitious of that complete empire of the sea which she 
had begun to build up upon the ruins of the French navy and the 
decay of Holland, and g:reedy of distant conquests over colonies 
which the French could not manage to defend. In proportion as 
the old influence of Eicbelieu and of Louis XIY. over European 
policy became weaker and weaker, English influence, founded upon 
the growing power of a free country and a free government, went 
on increasing in strength. "Without any other ally but Spaiu, 
herself wavering in her fidelity, tlie Frencb remained exposed to 
the attempts of England, henceforth delivered from the phantom 
of the Stuarts. " The peace concluded between England and 
France in 1748 was, as regards Europe, nothing but a truce," 
says Lord Macaulay : "it was not even a truce in other quarters 
of the globe." The mutual rivalry and mistrust between the two 
nations began to show themselves everywhere, in the East as well 
as in the West, in India as well as in America. 





CHAPTEE XIV. 

IX)tJIS XV. THE COLONIES. — THE SEVEN YBAES' WAR (1748 — 177i). 

— LITEEATDRE AND PHILOSOPHY. 

We must now review briefly the history of the French colonics, pounda- 
At the outset of Louis XIV.'s personal reign and through the per- tion of the 
severing efforts of Colbert, marching in the footsteps of Cardinal injjja 
Richelieu, an India Company had been founded for the purjDOse of Company, 
developing French commerce in those distant regions, which had 
always been shrouded in a mysterious lialo of fancied wealth and 
grandeur. Several times tlie Company had all but perished ; it had 
revived under the vigorous impulse communicated by Law and had 
not succumbed at the collapse of his system. It gave no money 
to its shareholders, who derived their benefits only from a partial 
concession of the tobacco revenues, granted by the king to the 
Company, but its directors lived a life of magnificence in the East, 
where they were authorised to trade on their own account. 
Abler and bolder than all his colleagues, Joseph Dupleix, mem- D^pieix. 
ber of a Gascon family and son of the comptroller-general of 
Hainault, had dreamed of other destinies than the management 
of a counting-house ; he aspired to endow France with the empire 
of India. Placed at a very early age at the head of the French 
establishments at Chandernugger, he had improved the city and 
constructed a fleet, all the while acquiring for himself an immense 
fortune ; he had just been sent to Pondicherry as governor-general 
of the Company's agencies when the war of succession to the 

II 



482 History of France, 

empire broke out in 1742. Unfortunately a serious misunderstand- 
ing took place between him and the governor of Bourbon and of 
He de France, Bertrand Francis Mahe de La Bourdonnais, who, in 
September, 1746, at the head of a flotilla, had obliged the English 
garrison of Madras to surrender. A jealous love of power and 
absorption in political schemes induced Dupleix to violate a 
promise lightly given by La Bourdonnais in the name of France ; 
he arbitrarily quashed a capitulation of which he had not discussed 
the conditions. The report of this unhappy conflict, and the colour 
put upon it by the representations of Dupleix, ruined at Paris the 
governor of He de France. 

On arriving at He de France, amidst that colony which he had 
found exhausted, ruined, and had endowed with hospitals, arsenals, 
quays, and fortifications. La . Bourdonnais learned that a new 
governor was already installed there. His dissensions with Dupleix 
had borne their fruits ; he had been accused of having exacted too 
paltry a ransom from Madras, and of having accepted enormous 
presents ; the Company had appointed a successor in his place. 
Driven to desperation, anxious to go and defend himself. La Bour- 
donnais set out for France with his wife and his four children ; a 
prosecution had already been commenced against him. He was 
captured at sea by an English ship, and taken a prisoner to England. 
The good faith of the conqueror of Madras was known in London ; 
one of the directors of the English Company offered his fortune as 
security for M. de la Bourdonnais. Scarcely had he arrived in 
Paris when he was thrown into the Bastille, and for two years kept 
in solitary confinement. When his innocence was at last acknow- 
ledged and his liberty restored to him, his health was destroyed, his 
fortune exhausted by the expenses of the trial. La Bourdonnais 
died before long, employing the last remnants of his life and of his 
strength in pouring forth his anger against Dupleix, to whom he 
attributed all his woes. His indignation was excusable, and some 
of his grievances were well grounded ; but the germs of suspicion 
thus sown by the unfortunate prisoner released from the Bastille 
were destined before long to consign to perdition not only his enemy, 
but also, together with him, that French dominion in India to 
■which M. de La Bourdonnais had dedicated his life. 

France and England had made peace ; the English and French 
Companies in India had not laid down arms. Their power, as well 
as the importance of their establishments, was as yet in equipoise. 
At Surat both Companies had places of business ; on the coast of 
Malabar, the English had Bombay and the French Mahe ; on the 
coast of Coromandel, the former held Madras and Fort St. George, 



Weakness of the French government. 483 

tlie latter Pondicherry and Karikal. The principal factories, as 
well as the numerous little establishments which were dependencies 
of them, were defended by a certain number of European soldiers 
and by Sepoys, native soldiers in the pay of the Companies. 

These small armies were costly, and diminished to a considerable 
extent the proiits of trade. Dupleix espied the possibility of a 
new organization, which should secure to the French in India the plans of 
preponderance, and ere long the empire even, in the two peninsulas. Dupleix. 
He purposed to found manufactures, utilise native hand-labour and 
develope the coasting- trade or Ind to Ind trade, as the expression 
then was ; but he set his pretensions still higher and carried his 
views still further. He purposed to acquire for the Company and, 
under its name, for France, territories and subjects furnishing 
revenues and amply sufficing for the expenses of the commercial 
establishments. The moment was propitious ; the ancient empire 
of the Great Mogul tottering to its base was distracted by revolu- 
tions ; Dupleix reckoned without France, and without the incom- 
petent or timid men who governed her. His successes scared King 
Louis XV. and his feeble ministers ; they angered and discomfited Snpine- 
England, which was as yet tottering in India, and whose affairs "^^^ °^ ^^^ 
there had for a long while been ill managed, but which remained govern- 
ever vigorous, active, animated by the indomitable ardour of a free ment. 
people. At Versailles attempts were made to lessen the conquests 
of Dupleix, prudence was recommended to him, delay was shown 
in sending him the troops he demanded. In India England had at 
last found a man still young and unknown, but worthy of being 
opposed to Dupleix. Clive, who had almost in boj'hood entered 
the Company's offices, turned out, after the turbulence of his early 
years, a heaven- born general ; he was destined to continue Dupleix's 
work, when abandoned by France, and to found to the advantage 
of the English that European dominion in India which had been 
the governor of Pondicherry 's dream. Two French corps were 
destroyed by Clive, and a third army soon shared the same fate. 
The report of Dupleix's reverses arrived in France in the month of 
September, 1752. 

The dismay at Versailles was great, and prevailed over the 
astonishment. There had never been any confidence in Dupleix's 
projects, there had been scarcely any belief in his conquests. The 
soft-hearted inertness of ministers and courtiers, was almost as 
much disgusted at the successes as at the defeats of the bold 
adventurers who were attempting and risking all for the aggran- 
disement and puissance of France in the East. The tone of Eng- 
land was more haughty than ever, in consequence of Clive's suc- 
cesses. The recall of Dupleix was determined upon. 

II 2 



484 History of Fi'ance. 

The governor of Poncliclierry had received no troops, but he had 
managed to reorganise an army, and had resumed the offensive in 
the Carnatic ; powerfully- helped by his military lieutenant, Bussy 
Castelnau, his future son-in-law, animated by the same zeal for the 
greatness of France. CJive was ill and had just set out for Eng- 
land : fortune had once more changed front. The open conferences 
held with Saunders, English governor of Madras, failed in the 
month of January, 1754 ; Dupleix wished to preserve the advan- 
tages he had won, Saunders refused to listen to that ; the approach 
of a French squadron was signalled. The ships appeared to be 
numerous. Dupleix was already rejoicing at the arrival of unex- 
pected aid, when, instead of an officer commanding the twelve 
hundred soldiers from France, he saw the apparition 01 M. Godeheu. 
one of the directors of the Company, and but lately his friend and 
correspondent. " I come to supersede you, sir," said the new 
arrival without any circumstance ; " I have full powers from the 
Company to treat with the English." The cabinet of London had 
net been deceived as to the importance of Dupleix in India; his 
recall had been made the absolute condition of a cessation of hos- 
tilities. Louis XV. and his ministers had shown no opposition ; 
the treaty was soon concluded, restoring the possessions of the two 
Companies within the limits they had occupied before the war of 
the Carnatic, with the exception of the district of Masulipatam, 
which became accessible to the English. All the territories ceded 
by the Hindoo princes to Dupleix reverted to their former masters ; 
the two Companies interdicted one another from taking any part in 
the interior policy of India, and at the same time forbade their 
agents to accept from the Hindoo princes any charge, honour or 
dignity ; the most perfect equality was re-established between the 
possessions and revenues of the two great European nations, rivals 
in the East as well as in Europe ; England gave up some petty 
forts, some towns of no importance, France ceded the empire of 
India. When Godeheu signed the treaty, Trichinopoli was at last 
on the point of giving in. Dupleix embarked for France with his 
' wife and daughter, leaving in India, together with his life's work 
destroyed in a few days by the poltroonery of his country's govern- 
ment, the fortune he had acquu-ed dimng his great enterprises, 
entirely sunk as it was in the service of France ; the revenues 
destined to cover his advances were seized by Godeheu. 

France seemed to comprehend what her ministers had not even 
an idea of; Dupleix's arrival in France was a veritable triumph. 
It was by this time known that the reverses which had caused so 
much, talk had been half repaired. It was by this time guessed 
how infinite were the resources of that empire of India, so lightly 



Misforttines of Dupleix. 485 

and mean- spiritedly abandoned to the English. **My wife and I 
dare not appear in the streets of Lorient," wrote Dupleix, "because 
of the crowd of people wanting to see us and bless us /' the 
comptroller-general, Herault de Sechelles, as well as the king and 
Madame de Pompadour, then and for a long while the reigning 
favourite, gave so favourable a reception to the hero of India that 
Dupleix, always an optimist, conceived fresh hopes. "I shall 
regain my property here," he would say, " and India wUl recover returns to 
in the hands of Bussy." France. 

He Avas mistaken about the justice as he had been about the 
discernment and the boldness of the French government ; not a 
promise was accomplished ; not a hope Avas realized ; after delay 
upon delay, excuse upon excuse, Dupleix saw his wife expire at 
the" end of two years, worn out with suffering and driven to despair: 
like her, his daughter, affianced for a long time past to Bussy, suc- 
cumbed beneath the weight of sorrow ; in vain did Dupleix tire 
out the ministers with his views and his projects for India, he saw 
even the action he was about to bring against the Company vetoed 
by order of the king. Persecuted by his creditors, overwhelmed 
with regret for the relatives and friends Avhom he had involved in 
his enterprises and in his ruin, he exclaimed a few months before 
his death : " I have sacrificed youth, fortune, life in order to load 
with honour and riches those of my own nation in Asia. Unhappy 
friends, too weakly credulous relatives, virtuous citizens have dedi- 
cated their property to promoting the success of my projects ; they 
are now in want. ... I demand, like the humblest of creditors, 
that which is my due ; my services are all stuff, my demand is 
ridiculous, I am treated like the vilest of men. The little I have 
left is seized, I have been obliged to get execution stayed to pre- 
vent my being dragged to prison !" Dupleix died at last on the . _ .„„, 
11th of November, 1763, the most striking, without being the last His death, 
or the most tragical, victim of the great French enterprises in (Nov. 11;. 
India. 

Despite the treaty of peace, hostilities had never really ceased 
in India. Clive had returned from England ; freed henceforth 
from the influence, the intrigues and the indomitable energy of 
Dupleix, he had soon made himself master of the Avhole of Bengal, 
he had even driven the French from Chandernugger ; Bussy had 
been unable to check his successes, he avenged himself by wresting 
away from the English all their agencies on the coast of Orissa, 
and closing against them the road between the Cororaandel coast 
and Bengal. 

Meanwhile the Seven Tears* war had broken out ; the whole of 



486 



History of France. 



Europe liad joined in the contest ; the French navy, still feehle 
in spite of the efforts that had been made to restore it, underwent 
serious reverses on every sea. Count Lally-Tolendal, descended 
from an Irish family -which took refuge in France with James II., 
went to Count d'Argenson, still minister of war, with a proposition 
to go and humble in India that English power which had been 
imprudently left to grow up without hindrance. M. de Lally had 
served with renown in the wars of Germany ; he had seconded 
Prince Charles Edward in his brave and yet frivolous attempt 
upon England. The directors of the India Company went and 
asked M d'Argenson to entrust to General Lally the king's troops 
promised for the expedition. " You are wrong," M. d'Argenson 
said to them : " I know M. de Lally, he is a friend of mine, but he 
is violent, passionate, inflexible as to discipline, he will not tolerate 
any disorder ; you will be setting fire to your warehouses, if you 
send him thither." The directors, however, insisted, and M. de 
Lally set out cin the 2nd of IMay, 1757, with four ships and a body 
of troops. Some young officers belonging to the greatest houses of 
France served on his staff. 

The brilliant courage and heroic ardour of M. de Lally triumphed 
over the first obstacles ; his recklessness, his severity, his passion- 
ateness were about to lose him the fruits of his victories. " The 
commission I hold," he wrote to the directors of the Company at 
Paris, " imports that I shall be held in horror by all the people of 
the country." By his personal faults he aggravated his already 
critical position. The discord which reigned in the army as well 
as amongst the civil functionaries was nowhere more flagrant than 
between Lally and Bujsy. The latter could not console himself 
for having been forced to leave the Deccan in the feeble hands of 
the marquis of ('onflans. An expedition attempted against the 
fortress of Wandiwash, of which the English had obtained pos- 
session, was followed by a serious defeat ; Colonel Coote was master 
of Karikal. Little by little the French army and French power in 
India found themselves cooped within the immediate territory of 
Pondicherry. The English marched against this town. Lally shut 
himself up there in the month of March, 1760. Bussy had been 
made prisoner, and Coote had sent him to Europe. " At the head 
of the French army Bussy would be in a position by himself alone 
to prolong the war for ten years," said the Hindoos. On the 27th 
of i^ovember, the siege of Pondicherry was transformed into an 
investment. 

He held out for six weeks, in spite of famine, want of money 
and ever increasing disseusious. At last it became necessary to 



Lally-Tolendal tried and beheaded, 487 

surrender, the council of the Company called upon the general to 

capitulate ; Lally claimed the honours of war, but Coote would 

have the town at discretion : the distress was extreme as well as . ^ 

A D 1761 
the irritation. Pondicherry was delivered up to the conquerors on Poudi- 

the 16th of January, 1761 ; the fortifications and magazines were cherry 

. • SUIT Pudfi ITS 

razed ; French power in India, long supported by the courage or ^^ ^^ 
ability of a few men, was foundering, never to rise again. " J^o- English, 
body can have a higher opinion than I of M. de Lally," wrote 
Colonel Coote : " he struggled against obstacles that I considered 
insurmountable and triumphed over them. There is not in India 
another maa who could have so long kept an army standing with- 
out pay and without resources in any direction." "A convincing 
proof of his merits," said another English officer, '' is his long and 
vigorous resistance in a place in which he was universally de- 
tested." 

Hatred bears bitterer fruits than is imagined even by those who 
provoke it. The animosity which M. de Lally had excited in 
India was everywhere an obstacle to the defence ; and it was 
destined to cost him his life and imperil his honour. Scarcely 
had he arrived in England, ill, exhausted by sufferings and fatigue, 
followed even in his captivity by the reproaches and anger of his 
comrades in misfortune, when he heard of the outbreak of public 
opinion against him in France \ he was accused of treason ; and 
he obtained from the English cabinet permission to repair to Paris. 
*'I bring hither my head and my innocence," he wrote, on dis- 
embarking, to the minister of war, and he went voluntarily to 
imprisonment in the Bastille. After a delay of nineteen months, 
the trial commenced in December, 1764, and on the 9th of May, 
at the close of the day, the valiant general whose heroic resistance 
had astounded all India mounted the scaffold on the Place de ^^- ^'^^^* 
Greve, nor was permission granted to the few friends who remained Toiendal 
faithful to him to accompany him to the place of execution ; there beheaded, 
was only the parish-priest of St. Louis en I'lle at his side ; as ^ *^ '■ 
apprehensions were felt of violence and insult on the part of the 
condemned, he was gagged like the lowest criminal when he reso- 
lutely mounted the fatal ladder ; he knelt without assistance and 
calmly awaited his death-blow. " Everybody," observed D'Alem- 
bert, expressing by that cruel saying the violence of public feeling 
against the condemned, " everybody, except the hangman, has a 
right to kill Lally," V'oltaire's judgment, after the subsidence of 
passion and after the light thrown by subsequent events upon the 
state of French affairs in India before Lally's campaigns, is more 
jxist: "It was a murder committed with the sword of justice." 



458 History of France. 

King Louis XV. and his government had lost India ; tlie rage and 
shame blindly excited amongst the nation by this disaster had 
been visited upon the head of the unhappy general who had been 
last vanquished in defending the remnants of Fi'ench power. 

For a long time past the French had directed towards America 
their ardent spirit of enterprise ; in the fifteenth century, on the 
morrow of the discovery of the new world, when the indomitable 
genius and religious faith of Christopher Columbus had just opened 
a new path to inquiring minds and daring spirits, the Basques, the 
Bretons and the ITormans were amongst the first to follow the 
road he had marked out ; their light barques and their intrepid 
navigators were soon known among the fisheries of Newfoundlond 
and the Canadian coast. As early as 1506 a chart of the St. Law- 
The French rence was drawn by John Denis, who came from Honfleur in ITor- 
mandy. Before long the fishers began to approach the coasts, 
attracted by the fur-trade; they entered into relations with the 
native tribes, buying, very often for a mere song, the produce of 
their hunting, and introducing to them together with the first- 
fruits of civilization, its corruptions and its dangers. Before long 
the savages of America became acquainted with the fire-water. 

Policy was not slow to second the bold enterprises of the navi- 
gators. France was at that time agitated by various earnest and 
mighty passions : for a moment the Eeformation, personified by the 
austere virtues and grand spirit of Coligny, had seemed to dispute 
the empire of the Catholic Church. The forecasts of the admiral 
became more and more sombre every day, he weighed the power 
and hatred of the Guises as well as of their partisans ; in his 
anxiety for his countrymen and his religion, he determined to 
secure for the persecuted Protestants a refuge, perhaps, a home in 
the new world, after that defeat of which he already saw a 
glimmer. 

A first expedition had failed, after an attempt on the coasts of 
Brazil; in 1562, a new flotilla set out from Havre, commanded by 
Eibaut's John Eibaut of Dieppe, who, having effected a landing, took pos- 
expedition. geggion of the country in the name of France, and immediately 
began to construct a fort which they called Fort Charles, in honour 
of the young king, Charles IX. Unhappily, at the end of three 
years, a Spanish expedition landed in Florida, commanded by 
Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who attacked and overmastered the 
French colonists ; a great number were massacred, others crowded 
on to the little vessels still at their disposal and carried to France 
the news of the disaster. 

For a long while expeditions and attempts at French colonizatioa 



Canada and Champlain. 489 

had been directed towards Canada. James Cartier, in 1535, had a.D, 1535. 
taken possession of its coasts tinder the name of JS"ew France. ^^"^^^ 
M. de Eoberval had taken thither colonists, agricultural and 
mechanical ; but the hard climate, famine and disease had stifled 
the little colony in the bud ; religious and political disturbances in 
the mother-country were absorbing all thoughts ; it was only in the 
reign of Henry IV., when panting France, distracted by civil dis- 
cord, began to repose for the first time since more than a century, 
beneath a government just, able, and firm at the same time, that zeal 
for distant enterprises at last attracted to New France its real founder. 
Samuel de Champlain du Brouage,born in 1567, a faithful soldier of Champ- 
the king's so long as the war lasted, was unable to endure the indo- ^^'^ 
lence of peace. After long and perilous voyages, he enlisted in the 
company which M. de Monts, gentleman of the bedchamber in 
ordinary to Henry IV., had just formed for the trade in furs on the 
northern coast of America; appointed viceroy of Acadia, a new 
territory, of which the imaginary limits would extend in our 
times from Philadelphia to beyond Montreal, and furnished with a 
commercial monopoly, M. de Monts set sail on the 7th of April, 
1604, taking with him, Calvinist though he was, Catholic priests as 
well as Protestant pastors. After long and painful explorations in 
the forests and amongst the Indian tribes, after frequent voyages to 
France on the service of the colony, he became at last, in 1606, the 
first governor of the nascent town of Quebec. 

Never was colony founded under more pious auspices ; for some 
time past the Recollects had been zealously labouring for the con- 
version of unbelievers ; seconded by the Jesuits, who were before 
long to remain sole masters of the soil, they found themselves suf- 
ficiently powerful to forbid the protestant sailors certain favourite 
exercises of their worship : " At last it was agreed that they should 
not chant the psalms," says Champlain, " but that they should 
assemble to make their prayers." 

In 1627, Eichelieu put himself at the head of a company of a BicTielieTi 

hundred associates, on wliich the king conferred the possession as "''^^'^^ * 
' ° _ ^ company 

well as the government of New France, together with the commer- for the 
cial monopolv and freedom from all taxes for fifteen years . The coloriza- 
colonists were to, be Irench and Catholics; huguenots were Canada, 
excluded : they alone had till then manifested any tendency 
towards emigration; the attempts at colonization in America were 
due to their efforts : less liberal in New France than he had lately 
been in Europe, the cardinal thus enlisted in the service of the 
foreigner all the adventurous spirits and the bold explorers amongst 
the French Protestants, at the very moment when the English 



490 History of France. 

Puritans, driven from their country by the narrow and meddlesome 
policy of James I , were dropping anchor at the foot of Plymouth 
Eock, and were founding, in the name of religious liberty, a new 
protestant England, the rival ere long of that iiew Prance which 
was catholic and absolutist. 

A.D. 1635. Champlain had died at Quebec on Christmas Day, 1635, after 

Champ- twenty-seven years' efforts and sufferings in the service of the 

death nascent colony. Bold and enterprising, endowed with indomitable 

(Dec. 25). perseverance and rare practical faculties, an explorer of distant 
forests, an intrepid negotiator with the savage tribes, a wise and 
patient administrator, indulgent towards all, in spite of his ardent 
devotion, Samuel de Champlain had presented the rare intermix- 
ture of the heroic qualities of past times with the zeal for science 
and the practical talents of modern ages ; he was replaced in his 
government by a knight of Malta, M. de Montmagny. Quebec 
had a seminary, a hospital and a convent, before it possessed a 
population. 

The foundation of Montreal was still more exclusively religious. 
The accounts of the Jesuits had inflamed pious souls with a noble 
emulation ; a Montreal association was formed, under the direction 
of M. Olier, founder of St. Sulpice. The first expedition was 
placed under the command of a valiant gentleman, Paul de Maison- 
neuve, and of a certain Mademoiselle Mance, belonging to the 
middle-class of Nogent-le-Eoi, who was not yet a nun, but who was 
destined to become the foundress of the hospital-sisters of Ville- 
Marie, the name which the religious zeal of the explorers intended 
for the new colony. 

The affair of Montreal stood, like that of Quebec ; New France 
was founded in spite of the sufferings of the early colonists, thanks 
to their courage, their fervent enthusiasm, and the support afforded 
them by the religious zeal of their friends in Europe. The Jesuit 
missionaries every day extended their explorations, sharing with 
M. de la Salle the glory of the great discoveries of the West. 
Champlain had before this dreamed of and sought for a passage 
across the continent, leading to the Southern seas and permitting 

La Salle, of commerce with India and Japan. La Salle, in his intrepid 
expeditions, discovered Ohio and Illinois, navigated the great lakes, 
crossed the Mississippi, which the Jesuits had been the first to 
reach, and pushed on as far as Texas. Constructing forts in the 
midst of the savage districts, taking possession of Louisiana in the 
name of King Louis XIV., abandoned by the majority of his com- 
rades and losing the most faithful of them by death, attacked by 
savages, betrayed by his own men, thwarted in his projects by his 



The Canadians and France. 49 1 

enemies and his rivals, this indefatigable explorer fell at last beneath 
the blows of a few mutineers, in 1687, just as he was trying to get 
back to N'ew France ; he left the field open after him to the 
innumerable travellers of every nation and every language who were 
one day to leave their mark on those measureless tracts. Every- 
where, in the western regions of the American continent, the foot- 
steps of the French, either travellers or missionaries, preceded the 

boldest adventurers. It is the glory and the misfortune of France ^ra^c*; as a 

,„..,. . . , . civilizing 

to always lead the van in the march of civilization, without having natioa. 

the wit to profit by the discoveries and the sagacious boldness of 
her children. On the unknown roads which she has opened to the 
human mind and to human enterprise she has often left the fruits 
to be gathered by nations less inventive and less able than she, but 
more persevering and less perturbed by a confusion of desires and 
an incessant renewal of hopes. 

The treaty of Utrecht had taken out of French hands the gates 
of Canada, Acadia and l^ewfoundland. It was now in the neigh- 
bourhood of N'ew France that the power of England was rising, 
growing rapidly through the development of her colonies, usurping 
little by little the empire of the seas, Canada was prospering, how- 
ever ; during the long wars which the condition of Europe had kept 
up in America, the Canadians had supplied the king's armies with 
their best soldiers. Eeturning to their homes and resuming with- TheFrencli 
out an effort the peaceful habits which characterized them, they ^*^^^^*'^'' 
skilfully cultivated their fields and saw their population increasing 
naturally without any help from the mother-country. The governors 
had succeeded in adroitly counterbalancing the influence of the 
English over the Indian tribes. The Iroquois, but lately impla- 
cable foes of France, had accepted a position of neutrality. 
Agricultural development secured to the country comparative 
prosperity, but money was scarce, the instinct of the popula- 
tion was not in the direction of commerce; it was everywhere 
shackled by monopolies. Tlie English were rich, free and bold ; 
for them the transmission and the exchange of commodities were 
easy. The commercial rivalry which set in between the two 
nations was fatal to the French ; when the hour of the final 
struggle came, the Canadians, though brave, resolute, passionately 
attached to France and ready for any sacrifice, were few in number 
compared with their enemies. Scattered over a vast territory, they 
possessed but poor pecuniary resources and could expect from the 
mother-country only irregular assistance, subject to variations of 
government and fortune as well as to the chances of maritime war- 
fare and engagements at sea, always perilous for the French ships, 



492 History of France, 

■which were inferior in build and in numher, whatever might be the 
courage and skill of their commanders. 

The capture of Louisbourg and of the island of Cape Breton by 
the English colonists, in 1745, profoundly disquieted the Canadians, 
it was the first scene in a drama doomed to end fatally for the 
interests of France. 

Eegretfully and as if compelled by a remnant of national honour 
Louis XY. adopted the resolution of defending his colonies ; he had, 
and the nation had as well, the feeling that the French were hope- 
lessly weak at sea. " What nse to us will be hosts of troops and 
plenty of money," wrote the advocate Barbier, " if we have only to 
fight the English at sea % They will take all our ships one after 
another, they will seize all our settlements in America and will get 
all the trade. We must hope for some division amongst the 
English nation itself, for the king personally does not desire war." 
The '^^^ English nation was not divided. The ministers and the 

English parliament, as well as the American colonies, were for war. 
French in " There is no hope of repose for our thirteen colonies, as long as 
Canada. the French are masters of Canada," said Benjamin Franklin on his 
arrival in London in 1754. He was already labouring, without 
knowing it, at that great work of American independence which was 
to be his glory and that of his generation ; the common efforts and 
the common interest of the thirteen American colonies in the war 
ag'iinst France were the first step towards that great coalition which 
founded the United States of America, 

The union with the mother country was as yet close and potent : 
at the instigation of Mr. Fox, soon afterwards Lord Holland, and 
at the time Prime Minister of England, parliament voted twenty- 
five millions for the American war. The bounty given to the 
soldiers and marines who enlisted was doubled by private sub- 
scription ; 15,000 men were thus raised to invade the French 
colonies. 

Canada and Louisiana together did not number 80,000 in- 
habitants, whilst the population of the English colonies already 
amounted to 1,200.000 souls ; to the 2800 regular troops sent from 
Heroism France the Canadian militia added about 4000 men, less experienced 
of the but quite as determined as the most intrepid veterans of the cam- 
anadians. pj^jg^g -y^ Europe. During more than twenty years the courage and 
devotion of the Canadians never faltered for a single day. 

The wicked deportation of four hundred and eighteen heads of 
families from Acadia excited in France the greatest and most 
natural emotion ; a few brilliant successes obtained by the marquis 
of Montcalm cheered up for a short space the hopes of the French 



The colonies lost to France. 493 

government; but it was all in vain. Quebec, besieged by general 
Wolfe, capitulated on the ISth of September, 1759. Both the 
English and the French commanders had been killed ; the capitula- caBitula- 
tion of Montreal was signed on the 8th of September, 1760 ; on the tion of 
10th of February, 1763, the peace concluded between France, Spain, 7^°^*/^^^ 
and England completed without hope of recovery the loss of all the 
French possessions in America ; Louisiana had taken no part in the 
war, it was not conquered ; . France ceded it to Spain in exchange 
for Florida, which was abandoned to the English. Canada and all 
the islands of the St. Lawrence shared the same fate. Only the 
little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were preserved for the French 
fisheries. One single stipulation guaranteed to the Canadians the 
free exercise of the Catholic religion. The principal inhabitants of 
the colony went into exile on purpose to remain French. The weak 
hands of King Louis XY. and of his government had let slip the 
fairest colonies of France, Canada and Louisiana had ceased to 
belong to her ; yet attachment to France subsisted there a long 
while and her influence left numerous traces there. It is an honour 
and a source of strength to France that she acts powerfully on men 
through the charm and suavity of her intercourse ; they who have 
belonged to France can never forget her. 

The struggle was over. King Louis XV. had lost his American France hu' 
colonies, the nascent empire of India and the settlements of Senegal, miliated 
He recovered Guaclaloupe and Martinique, but lately conquered by ^-^^ j^ggj 
the English, Chandernugger and the ruins of Pondicherry. The ciency of 
humiliation was deep and the losses were irreparable. All the fruits '^^^ 
of the courage, of the ability and of the passionate devotion of the 
French in India and in America were falling into the hands of 
England. Her government had committed many faults ; but the 
strong action of a free people had always managed to repair them. 
The day was coming Avhen the haughty passions of the mother- 
country and the proud independence of her colonies would engage 
in that supreme struggle which has given to the world the United 
States of America. 

It was not only in the colonies and on the seas that the peace of 
Aix-la-Chapelle had seemed merely a truce destined to be soon 
broken : hostilities had never ceased in India or Canada ; English 
vessels scoured the world, capturing, in spite of treaties, French 
merchant-ships ; in Europe and on the continent, all the sovereigns 
were silently preparing for new efforts ; only the government of 
King Louis XV., intrenched behind its disinterestedness in the 
negotiations and ignoring the fatal influences of weakness and 
vanity, believed itself henceforth beyond the reach of a fresh war. 



494 History of France. 

The nation, as oWivions as tlie government "but less careless tlian it, 
because they had home the hurthen of the fault committed, were 
applying for the purpose of their material recovery that power of 
revival which, through a course of so many errors and reverses, has 
always saved France ; in spite of the disorder in the finances and 
the crushing weight of the imposts, she was Avorlcing and growing 
rich ; intellectual development was following the rise in material 
resources ; the court was corrupt and inert, like the king, but a 
new life, dangerously free and bold, was beginning to course through 
men's minds : the Avise, reforming instincts, the grave reflections of 
the dying IMontesquieu no longer sufficed for them ; Voltaire, who 
had but lately been still moderate and almost respectful, was about 
to commence with his friends of the Encyclopedie that campaign 
against the Christian faith which was to pave the war for the 
Stnte of materialism of our own days. The state of the royal treasury, and 

the French j-j^g measures to which recourse was had to enable the State to make 

treasury. 

both ends meet, aggravated the dissension and disseminated discon- 
tent amongst all classes of society. Comptrollers-general came one 
after another, all armed with new expedients ; MM. de Machault, 
Moreau de Sechelles, de Moras, excited, successively, the wrath and 
the hatred of the people, crushed by imposts in peace as well as 
war ; the clergy refused to pay the twentieth, still claiming their 
right of giving only a fi'ee gift ; the states-districts, Languedoc and 
Erittany at the head, resisted, in the name of their ancient privi- 
leges, the collection of taxes to which they had not consented ; riots 
' went on multiplying : they even extended to Paris, where the 
government was accused of kidnapping children for transportation 
to the colonies. The people rose, several police-agents were mas- 
sacred ; the king avoided passing through the capital on his way 
from Versailles to the camp at Campiegne : the path he took in the 
Bois de Boulogne received the name of Revolt Road. " I have 
seen in my days," says D'Argenson, " a def-rease in the respect and 
love of the people for the kingship." 

Decadence went on swiftly, and no wonder. At forty years uf 
age Louis XV., finding every pleasure pall, indifferent to or forget- 
ful of business from indolence and disgust, bored by every thing 
and on every occasion, had come to depend solely on those who 

Madame de could still manage to amuse him. Madame de Pompadour had 
Pompa- accepted this ungrateful and sometimes shameful task. Vigilant 
in attaching the courtiers to herself, she sowed broadcast, all around 
her, favours, pensions, profitable offices, endowing the gentlemen to 
facilitate their marriage, turning a deaf ear to the complaints of the 
people as well as to the protests of the States or Parliaments. The 



War with England. 495 

court still swarmed with brave officers, ready to march to death at 
the head of the troops ; the command of armies henceforth depended 
on the favour of Madame the marchioness of Pompadour. 

The day had come when the fortune of war was abotit to show 
itself fatal to France. Marshal Saxe had died at Chamhord, still 
young and worn out by excesses rather than by fatigue. War, -^^.t: de- 
however, was inevitable ; five months of public or private negotia- clared 
tion, carried on by the ambassadors or personal agents of the king, England, 
could not obtain from England any reparation for her frequent vio- 
lation of the law of nations : the maritime trade of France was 
destroyed ; the vessels of the royal navy were themselves no longer 
safe at sea. On the 21st of December, 1755, the minister of foreign 
affairs, Eouille, notified to the English cabinet "that His Most 
Christian Majesty, before giving way to the effects of his resent- 
ment, once more demanded from the king of England satisfaction 
for all the seizures made by the English navy, as well as restitution 
of all vessels, whether war-ships or merchant-ships, taken from the 
French, declaring that he should regard any refusal that might be 
made as an authentic declaration of war." England eluded the 
question of law, but refused restitution. On the 23rd of January, 
an embargo was laid on all English vessels in Fj'ench ports, and war 
was officially proclaimed. It had existed in fact for two years 
past. 

A striking incident signalized the commencement of hostilities. 
Rather a man of pleasure and a courtier than an able soldier, Mar- 
shal Eichelieu had, nevertheless, the good fortune to connect his 
name Avith the only successful event of the Seven Years' War that 
was destined to remain impressed upon the mind of posterity, 
namely the capture of Port Mahon in the island of Minorca. Capture 

At the same time the king's troops were occupying Corsica in the of Port 
name of the city of Genoa, the time-honoured ally of France. Mis- * °°' 
tress of half the Mediterranean and secure of the neutrality of Hol- 
land, France could have concentrated her efforts upon the sea and 
have maintained a glorious struggle with England, on the sole con- 
dition of keeping peace on the Continent. The policy was simple 
and the national interest palpable \ King Louis XV. and some of 
his ministers understood this ; but they allowed themselves to drift 
into forgetfulness of it. 

For a long time past, under the influence of Count Kaunitz, a 
young diplomat equally bold and shrewd, "frivolous in his tastes 
and profound in his views," Maria Theresa was inclining to change 
the whole system of her alliances in Europe ; she had made ad 
vances to France. Louis XV. still sought to hold the balance 



49^ History of France. 

steady between the two great German sovereigns, "but lie was 
already beginning to lean towards the empress. A proposal was 
made to Maria Theresa for a treaty of guarantee between France, 
Austria and Prussia ; the existing war between England and 
France was excepted from the defensive pact ; France reserved 
to herself the right of invading Hanover. The same conditions 
had been offered to the king of Prussia; he was not contented 
with them. Whilst Maria Theresa was insisting at Paris upon 
obtaining an offensive as well as defensive alliance, Frederick II. 
was signing with England an engagement not to permit the 
entrance into Germany of any foreign troops. " I only wish to 
preserve Germany from war," wrote the king of Prussia to 
Louis XV. On the 1st of May, 1756, at Versailles, Louis XV. 
. replied to the Anglo-Prussian treaty by his alliance with the 
Empress Maria Theresa. The House of Bourbon was holding 
out the hand to the House of Austria ; the work of Henry IV. and 
of Eichelieu, already weakened by an inconsistent and capricious 
policy, was completely crumbling to pieces, involving in its ruin 
the militarj'' fortunes of France. 

The prudent moderation of Abbe de Bernis, then in great 
_ - favour with Madame de Pompadour and managing the negotia- 

Versailles. tions with Austria, had removed from the treaty of Versailles the 
most alarming clauses. The empress and the king of France 
mutually guaranteed to one another their possessions in Europe, 
"each of the contracting parties promising the other, in case of 
need, the assistance of twenty-four thousand men." Eussia and 
Saxony were soon enlisted in the same alliance ; the king of 
Prussia's pleasantries, at one time coarse and at another biting, 
had offended the czarina Elizabeth and the elector of Saxony as 
well as Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour. The weakest 
of the allies was the first to experience the miseries of that war 
so frivolously and gratuitously entered upon, from covetousness, 
rancour or weakness, those fertile sources of the bitterest sorrows 
to humanity. 
A.D. 1757. Whilst hostilities were thus beginning throughout Europe, 
stubbed b'v '^l^i^s^ negotiations were still going on with Vienna touching the 
Damiens second treaty of Versailles, King Louis XV., as he was descending 
(Jan. 6). ^Q staii'case of the marble court at Versailles on the 5th of 
January, 1757, received a stab in the side from a knife. With- 
drawing full of blood the hand he had clapped to his wound, the 
king exclaimed: "There is the man that wounded me, with his 
hat on ; arrest him, but let no harm be done him ! " The guards 
"were already upon the murderer and were torturing him pending 




THE MARCHIONESS OF POMPADOUR. 



Damiens and Madame de Pompadour. 497 

the le^al question. The king had been carried away, slightly 

wounded by a deep puncture from a penknife. In the soul of 

Louis XV. apprehension had succeeded to the first instinctive and 

kingly impulse of courage : he feared the weapon might be poisoned, 

and hastily sent for a confessor. The crowd of courtiers was 

already thronging to the dauphin's. To him the king had at once 

given up the direction of affairs. 

Justice, meanwhile, had taken the wretched murderer in hand. 

Robert Damipus was a lacquey out of place, a native of Artois, of 

weak mind and sometimes appearing to be deranged. In his 

vague and frequently incoherent depositions, he appeared animated 

bv a desire to avenge the wrongs of the Parliament ; he burst out _ , 

'' . . Torture 

against the archbishop of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont, a vir- and death 

tuous prelate of narrow mind and austere character : " The arch- °^. ^^" 

tn.i6iis 
bishop of Paris,'' he said, "is the cause of all this trouble through 

ordering refusal of the sacraments." !N"o investigation could dis- 
cover any conspiracy or accomplices : with less coolness and fana- 
tical resolution than Ravaillac, Damiens, like the assassin of 
Henry lY., was an isolated criminal, prompted to murder by the 
derangement of his own mind ; he died, like Ravaillac, amidst 
fearful tortures which were no longer in accord with public senti- 
ment, and caused more horror than awe. Prance had ceased to 
tremble for the life of King Louis XV. 

Por one instant the power of Madame de Pompadour had 
appeared to be shaken : the king, in his terror, would not see her ; 
M. de Machault, but lately her protege, had even brought her 
orders to quit the palace. Together with the salutary terrors of 
death, Louis XV. 's repentance soon disappeared ; the queen and 
the dauphin went back again to the modest and pious retirement 
in which they passed their life ; the marchioness returned in 
triumph to Versailles. MM. de Machault and D'Argenson were Machanlt 
exiled : the latter, who had always been hostile to the favourite. ^^^ D'Ar- 
was dismissed with extreme harshness. The king had himself fxilel. 
written the sealed letter : " Your services are no longer required. 
I command you to send me your resignation of the secretaryship 
of State for war and of all that appertains to the posts connected 
therewith, and to retire to your estate of Ormes." Madame de 
Pompadour was avenged. 

The war, meanwhile, continued : the king of Prussia, who had 
at first won a splendid victory over the Austrians in front of 
Prague, had been beaten at Kolin and forced to fall back on 
Saxony. Marshal d'Estrees, slowly occupying Westphalia, got the 
duke of Cumberland into a corner on the Weser, and defeated him 

E K 



498 



History of France. 



The duke of 
Eichelieu. 



Convention 
of Closter- 
Severn. 



Frede- 
rick II. 
contem- 
plates sui- 
cide. 



at Hastenbeck. He was then superseded by Richelieu, who in 
Germany, reaped the fruits of Marshal d'Estrees' successes ; the 
electorate of Hanover was entirely occupied ; all the towns opened 
their gates ; Hesse Cassel, Brunswick, the duchies of Verden and 
of Bremen met with the same fate. The marshal levied on all 
the conquered countries heavy contributions, of which he pocketed 
a considerable portion. His soldiers called him " Father La 
Maraude." The pavilion of Hanover at Paris was built ou^t of the 
spoils of Germany. Meanwhile, the duke of Cumberland, who 
had taken refuge in the marshes at the mouth of the Elbe, under 
the protection of English vessels, was demanding to capitulate ; 
his offers were lightly accepted. On the 8th of September, through 
the agency of Count Lynar, minister of the king of Denmark, the 
duke of Cumberland and the marshal signed at the advanced posts 
of the French army the famous convention of Closter-Severn. The 
king's troops kept all the conquered country ; those of Hesse, 
Brunswick and Saxe-Gotha returned to their homes ; the Hano- 
verians were to be cantoned in the neighbourhood of Stade. The 
marshal had not taken the precaution of disarming them. 

Incomplete as the convention was, it nevertheless excited great 
emotion in Europe. The duke of Cumberland had lost the military 
reputation acquired at Fontenoy ; the king of Prussia remained 
alone on the Continent, exposed to all the efforts of the allies ; 
every day fresh reverses came dk)wn upon him : the Russian army 
had invaded the Prussian provinces and beaten marshal Schwald 
near Meniel \ twenty-five thousand Swedes had just landed in 
Pomerania. Desertion prevailed amongst the troops of Frederick, 
recruited as they often M'ere from amongst the vanquished. 

For a moment, indeed, Frederick had conceived the idea of 
deserting simultaneously from the field of battle and from life. 
" My dear sister," he wrote to the margravine of Baireuth, " there 
is no port or asylum for me any more save in the arms of death." 
A letter in verse to the marquis of Argens pointed clearly to the 
notion of suicide. A firmer purpose, before long, animated that 
soul, that strange mixture of heroism and corruption. 

Fortune, moreover, seemed to be relaxing her severities. Under 
the influence of the hereditary grand-duke, a passionate admirer of 
Frederick IT., the Russians had omitted to profit by their victories; 
they were by this time wintering in Poland, Avhich was abandoned 
to all their exactions. The Swedes had been repulsed in the island 
of Rugen, Marshal Richeliea received from Versailles orders to 
remain at Halberstadt, and to send reinforcements to the army of 
tke prince of Soubise ; it was for this latter that Madame de Pom- 



Poptilarity of Frederic II. 499 

padour was reserving the honour of crushing the Great Frederick. 
More occupied in pillage than in vigorously pushing forward the 
war, the marshal tolerated a fatal licence amongst his troops. 

Whilst the plunder of Hanover was serving the purpose of feed- 
ing the insensate extravagance of Richelieu and of the army, 
Frederick II. had entered Saxony, hurling hack into Thuringia the 
troops of Soubise and of the prince of Hildburghausen. By this 
time the allies had endured several reverses ; the boldness of the 
king of Prussia's movements bewildered and disquieted ofl&cers as 
Avell as soldiers. On the 3rd of JS'ovember the Prussian army 
was all in order of battle on the left bank of the Saale, near 
Eosbach. 

Soubise hesitated to attack : being a man of honesty and sense, Battle of 
he took into account the disposition of his army, ^s well as the ?iS^^^ 3^ 
bad composition of the allied forces, very superior in number to 
the French contingent. The command belonged to the duke of 
Saxe-Hildburghausen, who had no doubt of success. Orders were 
given to turn the little Prussian army, so as to cut off its retreat. 
All at once, as the allied troops were effecting their movement to 
scale the heights, the king of Prussia, suddenly changing front by 
one of those rapid evolutions to which he had accustomed his men, 
unexpectedly attacked the French in flank, without giving them 
time to form in order of battle. The batteries placed on the hills 
were at the same time unmasked and mowed down the infantry. 
The German troops at once broke up. Soubise sought to restore 
the battle by cavalry charges, but he was crushed in his turn. 
The rout became general, the French did not rally till they reached 
Erfurt ; they had left eight thousand prisoners and three thousand 
dead on the field. 

The news of the defeat at Rosbach came bursting on France like 
a clap of thunder ; Frederick II. had renovated affairs and spirits Popularity 
in Germany ; the day after Rosbach, he led his troops into Silesia of Frede- 
against Prince Charles of Lorraine, who had just beaten the duke 
of Bevern ; the king of Prussia's lieutenants were displeased and 
disquieted at such audacity. He assembled a council of war, and 
then, when he had expounded his plans, " Farewell, gentlemen," 
said he, " we shall soon have beaten the enemy or we shall have 
looked on one another for the last time." On the 3rd of December 
the Austrians were beaten at Lissa as the French had been at 
Rosbach, and Frederick II. became the national hero of Germany ; 
the protestant powers, but lately engaged, to their sorrow, against 
him, made up to the conqueror ; admiration for him permeated 
even the French army. " At Paris," wrote D'Alembert to Voltaire, 

E K 2 



t;oo History of France. 

" everybody's head is turned about the king of Prussia ; five 
months ago he was trailed in the mire." 
Bernis The coiinsels of Abbe de Bernis had for some timp past been 

minister of pacific ; from a court-abbe, elegant and glib, he had become, on 
affairs. the 25th of June, minister of foreign affairs. But Madame de 
Pompadour remained faithful to the empress. In the month of 
January, 1758, Count Clermont was appointed general-in chief of 
the army of Germany. In disregard of the convention of Closter- 
Severn, the Hanoverian troops had just taken the field again under 
the orders of the grand-duke Ferdinand of Brunswick ; he had 
already recovered possession of the districts of Luneberg, Zell, a 
part of Brunswick and of Bremen. In England, Mr. Pitt, after- 
wards Lord Chatham, had again come into office; the king of 
Prussia could .henceforth rely upon the firmest support from Great 
Britain. 

He had need of it. A fresh invasion of Russians, aided by the 
savage hordes of the Zaporoguian Cossacks, was devastating Prussia; 
the sanguinary battle of Zorndorf, forcing them to fall back on 
Poland, permitted Frederick to hurry into Saxony, which was 
attacked by the Austrians. General Daun surprised and defeated 
him at Hochkirch ; in spite of his inflexible resolution, the king 
of Prussia was obliged to abandon Saxony. His ally and rival, 
Ferdinand of Brunswick, had just beaten Count Clermont at 
Crevelt. 
The count The new commander-in-chief of the king's armies, prince of the 
ofClermont Hood, brother of the late Monsieur la Due, abbot commendatory of 
Crevelt ^ ^''- Cermain-des-Pres, "general of the Benedictines," as the soldiers 
said, had brought into Germany, together with the favour of 
Madame de Pompadour, tipright intentions, a sincere desire to 
restore discipline, and some great allusions about himself De- 
feated at Crevelt, he was superseded by the marquis of Contades. 
The army murmured ; they had no confidence in their leaders. At 
Versailles, Abbe de Bernis, who had lately become a cardinal, paid 
by his disgrace for the persistency he had shown in . advising 
peace. 
The duke Madame de Pompadour had just procured for herself a support in 
ofphoiseul. j-^gj, obstinate bellicosity : Bernis was superseded in the ministry of 
racter. foreign affairs by Count Stainville, who was created duke of Choi- 
seul. After' the death of Marshal Belle-Isle he exchanged the office 
for that of minister of war ; with it he combined the ministry of 
the marine. The foreign affairs were entrusted to the duke of 
Praslin, his cousin. The power rested almost entirely in the hands 
of the duke of Choiseul. Of high birth, clever, bold, ambitious, he 



Projected invasion of England. 50 1 

had "but lately aspired to couple the splendour of successes in the 
fashionable world with the serious preoccupations of politics : his 
marriage with Mdlle. Crozat, a wealthy heiress, amiable and very 
much smitten with him, had strengthened his position. Elevated 
to the ministry by Madame de Pompadour, and as yet promoting 
her views, he nevertheless gave signs of an independent spirit and 
a proud character capable of exercising authority firmly in the pre- 
sence and the teeth of all obstacles. France hoped to find once 
more in M. de Choiseul a great minister; nor were her hopes 
destined to be completely deceived. 

A new and secret treaty had just rivetted the alliance between 
France and Austria. M. de Choiseul was at the same time dream- 
ing of attacking England in her own very home, thus 'dealing her 
the most formidable of blows. The preparations were considerable : 
M. de Soubise was recalled from Germany to direct the army of 
invasion. He was to be seconded in his command by the duke of 
Aiguillon, to whom, rightly or wrongly, was attributed the honour Invasion of 
of having repulsed in the preceding year an attempt of the English projected, 
at a descent upon the coasts of Brittany. The expedition was 
ready, there was nothing to wait for save the moment to go out of 
port, but Admiral Hawke was cruising before Brest ; it was only in 
the month of I^ovember, 1759, that the marquis of Confians, who 
commanded the fleet, could put to sea with twenty-one vessels. 
Finding himself at once pursued by the English squadron, he sought 
shelter in the difficult channels at the mouth of the Vilaine. The 
English dashed in after him. A partial engagement, which ensued, 
was unfavourable ; and the commander of the French rear-guard, 
M. St. Andre du Yerger, allowed himself to be knocked to pieces 
by the enemy's guns in order to cover the retreat. The admiral ran 
ashore in the bay of Le Croisic and burnt his own vessel ; seven 
ships remained blockaded in the Vilaine. M. de Conjians^ job, as 
the sailors called it at the time, was equivalent to a battle 
lost without the chances and the honour of the struggle. The 
English navy was triumphant on every sea, and even in French 
waters. 

The commencement of the campaign of 1759 had been brilliant Campaign 
in Germany : the duke of Broglie had successfully repulsed the °^ ^'^*^- 
attack made by Ferdinand of Brunswick on his positions at Ber- 
gen ; the prince had been obliged to retire. The tAvo armies, 
united under M. de Contades, invaded Hesse and moved upon the 
Weser; they were occupying Minden when Duke Ferdinand threw 
himself upon them on the 1st of August. The action of the two 
French generals was badly combined and the rout was complete. 



502 



History of France. 



The Rus- 
sians occn' 
py Poland, 



Marsbal 
Broglie 
general-in 
chief. 



Heroic 
death of 
Cbeva!i£r 
d'Assas. 



The necessity for peace was beginning to be admitted even in 
Madame de Pompadour's little cabinets. 

Maria Theresa, however, was in no hurry to enter into negotia- 
tions ; her enemy seemed to be bending at last beneath the weight 
of the double Austrian and Russian attack. At one time Frederick 
had thought that he saw all Germany rallying round him ; now, 
beaten and cantoned in Saxony, with the Austrians in front of him, 
during the winter of 1760, he was everywhere seeking alliances 
and finding himself everywhere rejected : " I have but two allies 
left," he would say, " valour aud perseverance." Repeated victories, 
gained at the sword's point, by dint of boldness and in the extremity 
of peril, could not even protect Berlin. The capital of Prussia 
found itself constrained to open its gates to the enemy, on the sole 
condition that the regiments of Cossacks should not pass the line of 
enclosure. When the regular troops withdrew, the generals had 
not been able to prevent the city from being pillaged. The heroic 
efforts of the king of Prussia ended merely in preserving to him a 
foot- hold in Saxony. The Russians occupied Poland. 

Marshal Broglie, on becoming general-in-chief of the French 
army, had succeeded in holding his own in Hesse ; he frequently 
made Hanover anxious. To turn his attention elsewhither and in 
hopes of deciding the French to quit Germany, the hereditary 
prince of Brunswick attempted a diversion on the Lower Rhine ; 
he laid siege to "VVesel whilst the English were preparing for a 
descent at Antwerp. Marshal Broglie detached M. de Castries to 
protect the city. The French corps had just arrived, it was bivou- 
acking. On the night between the 15th and 16th of October, 
Chevalier d'Assas, captain in the regiment of Auvergne, was sent to 
reconnoitre. He had advanced some distance from his men and 
happened to stumble upon a large force of the enemy. The prince 
of Brunswick was preparing to attack. All the muskets covered 
the young captain : " Stir, and thou'rt a dead man," muttered 
threatening voices. "Without replying, M. d'Assas collected all his 
strength and shouted : " Auvergne ! Here are the foe ! " At the 
same instant he fell pierced by twenty balls. [Accounts differ : 
but this is the tradition of the Assas family.] The action thus 
begun was a glorious one. The hereditary prince was obliged to 
abandon the siege of Wesel and to re-cross the Rhine. The French 
divisions maintained their positions. 

The war went on as bloodily as monotonously and fruitlessly, 
but the face of Europe had lately altered. The old king George II., 
who died on the 25th of September, 1760, had been succeeded on 
the throne of England by his grandson, George III., aged twenty- 



The " Family pactP 503 

two, the first really native sovereign who had been called to reign 
over England since the fall of the Stuarts. Pitt still reigned over 
Parliament and over England, governing a free country sovereign- 
masterlike. His haughty prejudice against France still ruled all 
the decisions of the English government, but Lord Bute, the young 
monarch's adviser, was already whispering pacific counsels destined 
ere long to bear fruit. Pitt's dominion was tottering when the first 
overtures of peace arrived in London. The duke of Choiseul pro- 
posed a congress. He at the same time negotiated directly with 
England, and seemed to be resigned to the most humiliating con- 
cessions, when a new actor came upon the scene of negotiation ; 
France no longer stood isolated face to face with triumphant 
England. The younger branch of the House of Bourbon cast into 
the scale the weight of its two crowns and the resources of its navy ; 
and at the moment when Mr. Pitt was haughtily rejecting the 
modest ultimatum of the French minister, the treaty, known by the 
name of Family Pact, yjas signed at Paris (August 15, 1761), ^•^' ^T^^- 
between France and the young king of Spain, Charles III. Pact" 

Never had closer alliance been concluded between the two courts, (A^ug. 15). 
even at the time when Louis XIV. placed his grandson upon the 
throne of Spain. It was that intimate union between all the 
branches of the House of Bourbon which had but lately been the 
great king's conception, and which had cost him so many efforts 
and so much blood ; for the first time it was becoming favourable 
to France ; the noble and patriotic idea of M. de Choiseul found an 
echo in the soul of the king of Spain ; the French navy, ruined and 
humiliated, the French colonies, threatened and all but lost, found 
faithful support in the forces of Spain, recruited as they were by a 
long peace. The king of the Two Sicilies and the Infante Duke of 
Parma entered into the offensive and defensive alliance, but it was 
nob open to any other power in Europe to be admitted to this 
family -union, cemented by common interests more potent and more 
durable than the transitory combinations of policy. In all the ports 
of Spain ships were preparing to put to sea. Charles III. had Spa'n pre- 
undertaken to declare war against the English if peace were not P^^_^^ ' 
concluded before the 1st of May, 1762. France promised in that 
case to cede to him the island of Minorca, 

Such efforts, however, were not destined to be attended with 
success ; before the year had rolled by, Cuba was in the hands of 
the English, the Philippines were ravaged and the galleons laden 
with Spanish gold captured by British ships. The unhappy fate of 
France had involved her generous ally. The campaign attempted 
against Portugal, always hand in hand with England, had not been 



504 History of France. 

attended with any result. Martinique had shared the lot of Guada- 
lou]3e, lately conquered by the English after a heroic resistance. 
Canada and India had at last succumbed. War dragged its slow 
length along in Germany. The brief elevation of the young 
czar Peter III., a passionate admirer of the Great Frederick, had 
delivered the king of Prussia from a dangerous enemy, and pro- 
mised to give him an ally equally trusty and potent. France was 
exhausted, Spain discontented and angry ; negotiations recommenced, 
on what disastrous conditions for the French colonies in both hemi- 
spheres has already been remarked : in Germany the places and 
districts occupied by France were to be restored ; Lord Bute, like 
his great rival, required the destruction of the port of Dunkerque. 
The preliminaries of peace had been already signed at Fontaine- 
bleau on the 3rd of November, 1762 ; it was i-eceived, not without 
ill-humour on the part of England but with a secret feeling of relief ; 
the burthens which weighed upon the country had been increasing 
Errors of every year. In 1762, Lord Bute had obtained from Parliament 
tke French 450 millions (18,000,000?.) to keep up the war: "I wanted the 
^"Tu*^" peace to be a serious and a durable one," said the English minister 
in reply to Pitt's attacks; "if we had increased our demands, it 
would have been neither the one nor the other." 

M. de Cboiseul submitted in despair to the consequences of the 
long continued errors committed by the Government of Louis XY. 
"Were I master," said he, "we would be to the English what 
Spain was to the Moors ; if this course were taken, England would 
be destroyed in thirty years from now." The king was a better 
judge of his weakness and of the general exhaustion. " The peace 
we have just made is neither a good olie nor a glorious one, nobody 
Choisenlin sees that better than I," he said in his private correspondence ; 
despair. " "but, under such unhappy circumstances, it could not be better, and 
I answer for it that if we had continued the war, we should have 
made a still worse one next year." All the patriotic courage and 
zeal of the duke of Choiseul, all the tardy impulse springing from 
the nation's anxieties could not suffice even to palliate the conse- 
quences of so many years' ignorance, feebleness and incapacity in 
succession. 

Prussia and Austria henceforth were left to confront one another, 
the only actors really interested in the original struggle, the last to 
quit the battle-field on to Avhich they had dragged their allies. By 
an unexpected turn of luck, Frederick II. had for a moment seen 
Iiussia becoming his ally ; a fresh blow came to wrest from him 
this powerful support. The czarina Catherine II., princess of 
Anhalt-Zerbst and wife of the czar Peter III., having been pro- 



Res J Its of the Seven Years war, 505 

claimed empress, inaugurated a new policy, equally bold and astute, 

having for its sole aim, unscrupulously and shamelessly pursued, 

the aggrandisement and consolidation of the imperial power: 

Eussia became neutral in the strife between Prussia and Austria, The 

The two sovereigns, left without allies and with tbeir dominions Czarina 

C3(tli6riii6 
drained of men and money, agreed to a mutual exchange of their ^L. 

conquests ; the boundaries of their territories once more became as 

they had been before the Seven Years' war. England alone came 

triumphant out of the strife. She had won India for ever ; and, 

for some years at least, civilized America, almost in its entirety, 

obeyed her laws. She had won what France had lost, not by 

superiority of arms, or even of generals, but by the natural and 

proper force of a free people, ably and liberally governed. 

The position of France abroad, at the end of the Seven Tears' 
war, was as painful as it was humiliating ; her position at home 
was still more serious and the deep-lying source of all the reverses 
which had come to overwhelm the French. Slowly lessened by 
the faults and misfortunes of King Louis XIV. 's later years, the 
kingly axithority, which had fallen, under Louis XY., into hands 
as feeble as they were corrupt, was ceasing to inspire the nation 
with the respect necessary for the working of personal power ; Position of 
public opinion was no longer content to accuse the favourite and ^^^^ice. 
the ministers, it was beginning to make the king responsible for 
the evils suffered and apprehended. People waited in vain for a 
decision of the crown to put a stop to the incessantly renewed 
struggles between the Parliament and the clergy. Thus, by 
mutually weakening each other, the great powers and the great 
influences in the State were wasting away j the reverses of the 
French arms, the loss of their colonies and the humiliating peace of 
Paris aggravated the discontent. In default of good government 
the people are often satisfied with glory. This consolation, to 
which the French nation had but lately been accustomed, faUed it 
all 'at once ; mental irritation, for a long time silently brooding, 
cantoned in the writings of philosophers and in the quatrains of 
j'hymesters, was beginning to spread and show itself amongst the 
nation \ it sought throughout the State an object for its wrath : 
the powerful society of the Jesuits was the first to bear all the 
brunt of it. 

A French Jesuit, Father Lavalette, had founded a commercial Proceed- 
house at Martinique. Euined by the war, he had become bankrupt ^^S^ 
to the extent of three millions ; the Order having refused to pay, it the Jesuits 
was condemned by the Parliament to do so. The responsibility ^° France 
was declared to extend to aU the members of the Institute, and gal. 



5o6 History of France. 

public opinion triumphed over the condemnation witli a " quasi- 
indecent " joy, says the advocate Barbier. In or was it content 
with this legitimate satisfaction. One of the courts which had 
until lately been most devoted to the Society of Jesus had just set 
an example of severity. In 1759, the Jesuits had been driven 
from Portugal by the marquis of Pombal, King Joseph I.'s all- 
powerful minister ; their goods had been confiscated, and their 
principal, Malagrida, handed over to the Inquisition, had just been 
burnt as a heretic (Sept. 20, 1761). 
A.D. 1767. In 1767, the king of Spain, Charles III., less moderate than the 
Snain government of Louis XV., expelled with violence all the members 

of the Society of Jesus from his territory, thus exciting the Parlia- 
ment of Paris to fresh severities against the French Jesuits, and, on 
the 20th of July, 1773, the court of Eome itself, yielding at last to 
pressure from nearly all the sovereigns of Europe, solemnly pro- 
nounced the dissolution of the Order : " Recognizing that the 
members of this Society have not a little troubled the Christian 
commonwealth, and that for the welfare of Christendom it were 
better that the Order should disappear." The last houses still 
offering shelter to the Jesuits were closed ', the general, Eicci, was 
imprisoned at the castle of St. Angelo, and the Society of Jesus, 
which had been so powerful for nearly three centuries, took refuge 
in certain distant lands, seeking in oblivion and silence fresh 
strength for the struggle which it was one day to renew. 
TheParlia- The Parliaments were triumphant, but their authority, Avhich 
ments. seemed never to have risen so high or penetrated so far in the 
La Chalo- government of the State, was already tottering to its base. Once 
tais. more the strife was about to begin between the kingl}'- power and the 

magistracy, whose last victory was destined to scarcely precede its 
downfall. The financial embarrassments of the State were growing 
more serious every day : to the debts left by the Seven Years' war 
were added the new wants developed by the necessities of com- 
merce and by the progress of civilization. The refusal of several 
of the provincial parliaments to register fhe edicts promulgated by 
the crown ended in the arrest of five of the members of the Par- 
liament of Rennes ; at their head was the attorney-general, M. d<} 
la Chalotais, author of a very remarkable paper against the Jesuits. 
It was necessary to form at St. Malo a King's Chamber to try the 
accused. M. de Calonne, an ambitious young man, the declared 
foe of M. de la Chalotais, was appointed attorney-general on the 
commission. He jDretended to have discovered grave facts against 
the accused ; he was suspected of having invented them. Public 
feeling was at its height ; the magistrates loudly proclaimed tha 



Madame Dubarry. — Choisetil dismissed. 5^7 

theory of Classes, according to whicli all the Parliamenls of France, 
responsible one for another, formed in reality but one body, dis- 
tributed by delegation throughout the principal towns of the 
realm. 

Under the administration of the duke of Duras, the agitation 
subsided in Brittany ; the magistrates who had resigned resumed 
their seats ; M. de La Chalotais and his son, M. de Caradeuc, alone 
remained excluded by order of the king. The restored Parliament 
immediately made a claim on their behalf, accompanying the request 
"with a formal accusation against the duke of Aiguillon. The 
states supported the Parliament. A royal ordinance forbade any 
proceedings against the duke of Aiguillon, and enjoined silence on 
the parties. Parliament having persisted, and declaring that the 
accusations against the duke of Aiguillon attached (entachaient) 
his honour, Louis XV., egged on by the chancellor, M. de Mau- 
peou, an ambitious, bold, bad man, repaired in person to the office 
and had all the papers relating to the procedure removed before his 
eyes. The strife was becoming violent : the duke of Choiseul, still 
premier minister, but sadly shaken in the royal favour, disapproved 
of the severities employed against the magistracy. All the blows 
dealt at the Parliaments recoiled upon him. 

King Louis XV. had taken a fresh step in the shameful ^..D. 1764. 
irregularity of his life; en the 15th of April, 1764, Madame de Death of 
Pompadour had died, at the ag^ of forty-two, of heart-disease. As po^p^o^j 
frivolous as she was deeply depraved and base-minded in her (April 15J. 
calculating easiness of virtue, she had more ambition than com- 
ported with her mental calibre or her force of character ; she had 
taken it into her head to govern, by turns promoting and over- 
throwing the ministers, herself proffering advice to the king, 
sometimes to good purpose, but more often still with a levity 
as fatal as her obstinacy. Less clever, less ambitious but more 
potent than Madame de Pompadour over the faded passions of a 
monarch aged before his time, the new favourite, Madame Dubarry, 
made the least scrupulous blush at the lowness of her origin 
and the irregularity of her life. It was, nevertheless, in her circle 

that the plot was formed against the duke of Choiseul. Bold, «. 

. DiSPTac© 

ambitious, restless, presumptuous sometimes in his views and his ofCh'istul, 

hopes, the minister had his heart too nearly in the right place Madame 

and too proper a spirit to submit to either the yoke of Madame ^ ^"^' 

Dubarry or that of the shameless courtiers who made use of her 

influence. He was dismissed on the 24th of December, 1770, and 

the power passed into the hands of Chancellor Maupeou, the new 

comptroller-general. Abbe Terray, and the duke of Aiguillon. 



5o8 History of France, 

With M. de Choiseal disappeared the sturdiest prop of the 
Pailiaments. In vain had the king ordered the magistrates to 
resume their functions and administer justice. " There is nothing 
left for your Parliament," replied the premier president, " but to 
•Derish with the laws, since the fate of the magistrates should 
go with that of the State." Madame Dubarry, on a hint from her 
able advisers, had caused to be placed in her apartments a fine 
portrait of Charles T. by Van Dyck. " France" she was always 
reiterating td the king with vulgar familiarity, "France, thy Par- 
liament will cut off tliy head too ! " 
No analogy ^ piece of ignorant confusion, due even more to analogy of 
theEnglisli i^ame than to the generous but vain efforts often attempted by the 
and the French magistracy in favour of sound doctrines of government. 
roarlla- "^^^^ Parliament of Paris fell sitting upon curule chairs, like the 
ments. old senators of Pome during the invasion of the Gauls ; the 
political spirit, the collected and combative ardour, the indomitable 
resolution of the English Parliament, freely elected representatives 
of a free people, were unknown to the French magistracy. 
Despite the courage and moral elevation it had so often shown, its 
strength had been wasted in a constantly useless strife ; it had 
withstood Eichelieu and Mazarin \ already reduced to submission by 
Cardinal Fleury, it fell beneath the equally bold and skilful blows 
of Chancellor Maupeou. Amidst the rapid decay of absolute power, 
the transformation and abasement of the Parliaments a skilful and 
bold attempt to restore some sort of force and unity to the kingly 
authority. It was thus that certain legitimate claims had been, 
satisfied, the extent of jurisdictions had been curtailed, the sale- 
ability of offices had been put down, the expenses of justice had 
been lessened. 

The ferment caused by this measure subsided without having 
reached the mass of the nation ; the majority of the princes made 
it up with the court, the dispossessed magistrates returned one after 
, another to Paris, astonished and mortified to see justice adminis-' 

Maupeou ^gj.Q(j -without them and advocates pleading before the Maupeou 
ment." Parliament. The chancellor had triumphed and remained master : 
all the old jurisdictions were broken up, public opinion was already 
forgetting them ; it was occupied Avith a question more important 
still than the administration of justice. The ever increasing dis- 
order in the finances was no longer checked by the enregistering 
of edicts ; the comptroller-general, Abbe Terray, had recourse 
shamelessly to every expedient of a bold imagination to fill the 
royal treasury ; it was necessary to satisfy the ruinous demands of 
Madame Dubarry and of the depraved courtiei's who thronged 



Death in the Rcyal Family of France. 509 

al)Out her. Successive bad harvests and the high pmce of hread 
stiil further aggravated the position. It was known that the king 
had a taste for private speculation ; he was accused of trading iu 
grain and of baying up the stores required .for feeding the people. 
The odious rumour of \!t\\s> famine-pact, as the bitter saying was, 
soon spread amongst the mob. Before its fall, the Parliameut 
of Rouen had audaciously given expression to these dark accusa- 
tions ; it had ordered proceedings to be taken against the mono- 
liolists. A royal injunction put a veto upon the prosecutions. 
Contempt grew more and more profound : the king and Madame 
Dubarry by their shameful lives, Maupeou 8.nd Abbs Terray by 
destroying the last bulwarks of the public liberties, were digging 
with their own hands the abyss in which the old French monarchy 
was about to be soon engulfed. 

In the meanwhile, the dauphin died at the age of thirty-six on a.D. 1765. 
the 20th of December, 1765, profoundly regretted by the bulk of ^^^'-^ °^ 
the nation, who knew his virtues without troubling themselves, ^n^iri. 
like the court and the philosophers, about the stiffness of his (Dec. 20), 
manners and his complete devotion to the cause of the clergy. The 
new dauphin, who would one day be Louis XVI., was still a child: 
the king had him brought into his closet. " Poor France ! " he 
said sadly, " a king of fifty-five and a dauphin of eleven ! " The 
dauphiness and Queen Mary Leczinska soon followed the dauphin of the 
to the tomb (1767, 1768). The king, thus left alone, and scared ^{^1^^'^^'^ 
by the repeated deaths around him, appeared for a while to be and of the 
drawn closer to his daughters, for whom he had always retained ^^^-f 
some sort of affection, a mixture of weakness and habit. One of 
them, Madame Louise, who was deeply pious, left him to enter the 
convent of the Carmelites ; he often went to see her, and granted her 
all the favours she asked. But by this time Madame Dubarry had 
become all-powerful ; to secure to her the honours of presentation 
at court the king personally solicited the ladies with whom he was 
intimate in order to get them to support his favourite on this new 
stage; when the youthful Marie Antoinette, archduchess of Austria 
and daughter of Maria Theresa, whose marriage the duke of 
Choiseul had negotiated, arrived in France, in 1770, to espouse the 
dauphin, Madame Dubarry appeared alone with the royal family 
at the banquet given at La Muette on the occasion of the marriage. 
After each reaction of religious fright and transitory repentance, 
after each warning from God that snatched him for an instant from 
the depravity of his life, the king plunged more deeply than before 
into shame. Madame Dubarry was to reign as much as Louis XV. 

Before his fall the duke of Choiseul had made a last effort to 



510 



History of France. 



revive abroad that fortune of France which he saw sinking at home 

without his being able to apply any effective remed3\ He had 

vainly attempted to give colonies once more to France by founding 

the Frenct ill French Guiana settlements which had been unsuccessfu^Uy 



colonies. 



Partition 
of Poland, 



attempted by a Eouennese Company as early as 1634. The 
enterprise was badly managed ; the numerous colonists, of very 
diverse origin and worth, were cast without resources upon a terri- 
tory as unhealthy as fertile. ISTo preparations had been made 
to receive them ; the majority died of disease and want ; Nero 
France henceforth belonged to the English, and the great hopes 
which had been raised of replacing it in Equinoctial France^ as 
Guiana was named, soon vanished never to return. An attempt 
made about the same epoch at St. Lucie was attended with the same 
result. The great ardour and the rare aptitude for distant enter- 
prises which had so often manifested themselves in France from the 
fifteenth to the seventeenth century seemed to be henceforth ex- 
tinguished. Only the colonies of the Antilles, which had escaped 
from the misfortunes of war, and were by this time recovered from 
their disasters, offered any encouragement to the patriotic efforts of 
the duke of Choiseul. He had been more fortunate in Europe than 
in the colonies. 

Corsica, whose independence had been gloriously but fruitlessly 
defended by Pascal Paoli, was to be the last conquest of the old 
French monarchy. Great or little, magnificent or insignificant, 
from Richelieu to the duke of Choiseul, France had managed to 
preserve her territorial acquisitions ; in America and in Asia, 
Louis XY. had shamefully lost Canada and the Indies ; in Europe, 
the diplomacy of his ministers had given to the kingdom Lorraine 
and Corsica. The day of insensate conquests ending in a diminu- 
tion of territory had not yet come. In the great and iniquitous 
dismemberment which was coming, namely the partition of Poland, 
France was to have no share. The political annihilation of 
Louis XV. in Europe had been completed by the dismissal of the 
duke of Choiseul. 

The public conscience is lightened by lights which ability, even 
when triumphant, can never altogether obscure. The Great 
Frederick and the Empress Catherine have to answer before history 
for a crime which they made acceptable to the timorous jealously of 
Maria Theresa and to the youthful ambition of her son. 

France did not do anything and could not do anything ; the 
king's secret negotiators, as well as the minister of foreign affairs, 
had been tricked by the allied powers. " Ah ! if Choiseul had 
"been here ! " exclaimed King Louis XV,, it is said, when he heard 



Partition of Poland. 5 1 £ 

of the partition of Poland. The duke of Choiseul would no doubt 

have been more clear-sighted and better informed than the duke of 

Aiguillon, but his policy could have done no good. Frederick 11. 

knew that. " France plays so small a part in Europe," he wrote to 

Count Solms, " that I merely tell you about the impotent efforts of 

the French ministry's envy just to have a laugh at them and to let 

you see in what visions the consvjiousness of its own weaknesses is 

capable of leading that court to indulge." " Oh, where is Poland % " 

Madame Dubarry had said to Count Wicholorsky, King Stanislaus 

Augustus' charge d'affaires, who was trying to interest her in the 

misfortunes of his country. 

The partition of Poland was barely accomplished, and already 

King Louis XV., for a moment roused by the audacious aggression Lethargy 

of the German courts, had sunk back into the shameful lethargy of ^'^^ J™* . 

' ^•' . morality of 

his life. When Madame Louise, the pious Carmelite of St. Denis, Louis XV. 

succeeded in awakening in her father's soul a gleam of religious 

terror, the courtiers in charge of the royal pleasures redoubled their 

efforts to distract the king from thoughts so perilous for their own 

fortunes. Louis XV., fluctuating between remorse and depravity, 

ruled by Madame Dubarry, bound hand and foot to the triumvirate 

of Chancellor Maupeou, Abbe Terray and the duke of Aiguillon, 

who were consuming between them in his name the last remnants 

of absolute power, fell suddenly ill of small-pox. The princesses, 

his daughters, had never had that terrible disease, the scourge and 

terror of all classes of society, yet they bravely shut themselves 

up with the king, lavishing their attentions upon him to the last 

gasp. Death, triumphant, had vanquished the favourite : Madame 

Dubarry was sent away as soon as the nature of the malady had 

declared itself. The king charged his grand almoner to ask pardon 

of the courtiers for the scandal he had caused them. " Kings owe 

no account of their conduct save to God only," he had often 

repeated to comfort himself for the shame of his life. " It is 

just He whom I fear," said Maria Theresa, pursued by remorse for 

the partition of Poland. 

Louis XV. died on the 10th of May, 1774, in his sixty-fourth A.D. 1774. 

year, after reigning fifty- nine years, despised by the people who had ^f^j- xv 

not so long ago given him the name of Well-beloved, and whose (May 10). 

attachment he had worn out by his cold indifference about affairs 

and the national interests as much as by the irregularities of his life. 

With him died the old French monarchy, that proud power which 

had sometimes ruled Europe whilst always holding a great position 

therein. Henceforth France was marching towards the unkno\vii, 

tossed about as she Avas by divers movements, which were mostly 



512 History of France. 

hostile to the old state of things, blindly and confusedly as yet, hut, 
under the direction of masters as inexperienced as tliey were 
daring, full of frequently noble though nearly always extravagant 
and reckless hopes, all founded on a thorough reconstruction of 
the bases of society and of its ancient props. Far more even than 
the monarchy, at the close of Louis XV. 's reign, did religion find 
itself attacked and threatened ; the blows struck by the philosophers 
at fanaticism recoiled upon tlie Christian faith, transiently liable 
here below for human errors and faults over which it is destined to 
triumph in eternity. 

IS'owhere and at no epoch had literature shone with so vivid a 
lustre as in the reign of Louis XIV. ; never has it been in a 
greater degree the occupation and charm of mankind, never has it 
left nobler and rarer models behind it for the admiration and imita- 
tion of the coming race : the writers of Louis XV.'s age, for all 
their brilliancy and all their fertility, themselves felt their inferi- 
ority in respect of their predecessors. Voltaire confessed as much 
with a modesty which was by no means familiar to him. Inimit- 
able in their genius, Corneille, Bossuet, Pascal, Moliere, left their 
imprint upon the generation that came after them ; it had judg- 
ment enough to set them by acclamation in the ranks of the 
classics ; in their case, greatness displaced time. Voltaire took 
Eacine for model ; La Motte imagined that he could imitate La Fon- 
taine. The illustrious company of great minds which surrounded the 
throne of Louis XIV. and had so much to do with the lasting splen- 
dour of his reign had no reason to complain of ingratitude on the 
part of its successors ; but, from the pedestal to which they raised it, 
it exercised no potent influence upon new thought and new passions. 

Montesquieu, despite the wise moderation of his great and strong 
mind, was the first to awaken that yearning for novelty and reforms 
which had been silently brooding at the bottom of men's hearts. 
Born in 1689 at the castle of La Brede, near Bordeaux, Montes- 
qviieu really belonged, in point of age, to the reign of Louis XIV., 
of which he bears the powerful imprint even amidst the boldness 
of his thoughts and expressions. Grandeur is the distinctive cha- 
racteristic of Montesquieu's ideas as it is of the seventeenth century 
altogether. In 1721, when he still had his seat on the fleurs-de-lis, 
he had published his Lettres persanes, an imaginary trip of two exiled 
Parsees, freely criticizing Paris and France. The book appeared 
under the Eegency, and bears the imprint of it in the licentious- 
ness of the descriptions and the witty irreverence of the criticisms. 
Sometimes, however, the future gravity of Montesquieu's genius 
reveals itself amidst the shrewd or biting judgments. 



Monttisquieu. 5 1 3 

The succiess of the Lettres persanes was great; Montesquieu had 
said what many people thought without daring to express it ; the 
doubt which was nascent in his mind, and which he could only 
withstand by an effort of will, the excessive freedom of the tone 
and of the style scared the authorities, however ; when he wanted 
to get into the French Academy, in the place of M. de Sacy, 
Cardinal Fleury opposed it formally. It was only on the 24:th 
of January, 1728, that Montesquieu, recently elected, delivered 
his reception speech. He at once set out on some long travels ; 
and in 1734, he published his Considerations su'r les causes de la xhe "Con- 
grandeur et de la decadence des Romains. Montesquieu did not, sidera- 
as Bossuet did, seek to hit upon God's plan touching the destinies 
of mankind : he discovers in the virtues and vices of the Eomans 
themselves the secret of their triumphs and of their reverses. The 
contemplation of antiquity inspires him with language often 
worthy of Tacitus, curt, nervous, powerful in its grave simplicity. 

Montesquieu thus performed the prelude to the great work of his 
life : he had been working for twenty years at the Esjorit des lois, 
when he published it in 1748. "In the course of twenty years," 
he says, " I saw my work begin, grow^ progress and end." He had 
placed as the motto to his book this Latin phrase, which at first 
excited the curiosity of readers ; Prolem sine matre creaiam 
{.Offspring begotten icithout a molher). " Young man," said Mon- 
tesquieu, by this time advanced in years, to M. Suard (afterwards 
perpetual secretary to the French Academy), " young man, when 
a notable book is written, genius is its father and liberty its 
mother ; that is why I wrote upon the title-page of my work : 
Prolem sine matre creatam." 

It was liberty at the same time as justice that Montesquieu The 
sought and claimed in his profound researches into the laws which , ^?-„ 
have from time immemorial governed mankind ; that new instinc- 
tive idea of natural rights, those new yearnings which were begin- 
ning to dawn in all hearts, remained as yet, for the most part, upon 
the surface of their minds and of their lives ; what was demanded 
at that time in France was liberty to speak and write rather than 
to act and govern. Montesquieu, on the contrary, went to the 
bottom of things, and, despite the natural moderation of his mind, 
he propounded theories so perilous for absolute power that he dared 
not have his book printed at Paris, and brought it out in Geneva ; 
its success was immense : before his death, Montesquieu saw 
twenty-one French editions published and translations in all the 
languages of Europe. " Mankind hud lost its title-deeds," says 
Voltaire : '•' Montesquieu recovered and restored them." 

L L 



514 History of France. 

The intense lalionr, the immense courses of reading, to which 
Montesquieu had devoted himself, had exhausted his strength ; he 
died on the 10th of February, 1755, at the age of sixty-six, at the 
l)eginning of the reign of the philosophers, whose way he had 
prepared before them without having ever belonged to their 
number. Didei'ot alone followed his bier. Fontenelle, nearly a 
hundred years old, was soon to follow him to the tomb. 
Fonte- Born at Eouen in February, 1657, and nephew of Corneille on 

^^ ®' the mother's side, Fontenelle did not receive from nature any of 

the unequal and sublime endowments which have fixed the 
dramatic crown for ever upon the forehead of Corneille ; but he 
inherited the wit, and hel esprit which the great tragedian hid 
beneath the splendours of his genius. When, at forty years of age, 
he became perpetual secretary to the Academy of Sciences, he had 
already Avritten his book on the Pluralite des Mondes, the first 
attempt at that popularization of science which has spread so since 
then. " I believe more and more," he said, " that there is a certain 
genius which has never yet been out of our Europe, or, at least, 
has not gone far out of it." This genius, clear, correct, precise, the 
genius of method and analysis, the genius of Descartes, which was 
expounder ^^ ^ later period that of Buffon and of Cuvier, was admirably 
of science, expounded and developed by Fontenelle for the use of the 
ignorant. He wrote for society and not for scholars, of whose 
labours and discoveries he gave an account to society. His extracts 
from the labours of the Academy of Science, and his eulogies of 
the Academicians are models of lucidness under an ingenious and 
subtle form, rendered simple and strong by dint of wit. " There 
is only truth that persuades," he used to say, " and even without 
requiring to appear with all its proofs. It makes its way so 
naturally into the mind, that, when it is heard for the first time, 
it seems as if one were merely remembering." 

Equitable and moderate in mind, prudent and cold in tempera- 
ment, Fontenelle passed his life in discussion without ever stum- 
bling into disputes ; his very courage and trustiness bore this stamp 
of discreet moderation. When the Abbe St. Pierre was excluded 
from the French Academy under Louis XV. for having dared to 
Eis liberal criticize the government of Louis XIV., one single ball in the urn 
views, protested against the unjust pressure exercised by Cardinal Fleury 
upon the society. They all asked one another who the rebel was ; 
each defended himself against having voted against the minis- 
ter's order ; Fontenelle alone kept silent ; when everybody had 
exculpated himself, " It must be myself, then," said Fontenelle 
half aloud. 



Voltaire. 515 

So much cool serenity and so much taste for noble intellectual 
"Works prolonged the existence of Fontenelle beyond the ordinary 
limits ; he was ninety-nine and not yet we^ry of life : " If I might 
but reach the strawberry-season once more ! " he had said. He 
died at Paris on the 9th of January, 1759 ; with him disappeared 
what remained of the spirit and traditions of Louis XIV. 's reign. 
Montesquieu and Fontenelle were the last links which united the 
seventeenth century to the new era. The flood of free-thinking 
had spared Montesquieu and Fontenelle, it was about to carry away 
Voltaire almost as far as Diderot. 

Born at Paris on the 21st of !N"ovember, 1694, Francois Marie Voltaire. 
Arouet de Voltaire was sent to the college of Louis-le-Grand, which 
at that time belonged to the Jesuits. As early as then, little 
Arouet, who was weak and in delicate health, but withal of a very 
lively intelligence, displayed a freedom of thought and a tendency 
to irreverence which already disquieted and angered his masters. 
Father Lejay jumped from his chair and took the boy by the 
collar, exclaiming, " Wretch, thou wilt one of these days raise the 
standard of Deism in France ! " Father Pallou, his confessor, 
accustomed to read the heart, said as he shook his head, "This 
child is devoured with a thirst for celebrity." Under a despotic 
government, this awkward disposition must necessarily lead to 
painful consequences ; it was within the precincts of the Bastille 
that young Arouet wrote the first part of the poem called La 
Henriade, under the title of La Ligue ; when he at last obtained 
his release in April, 1718, he at the same time received orders to 
reside at Chatenay, where his father had a country house. It was 
on coming out of the Bastille that the poet took, from a small 
family- estate, that name of Voltaire which he was to render so 
famous. " I have been too unfortunate under my former name," 
he wrote to Mdlle. du Koycr, " I mean to see whether this will 
suit me better." 

The players were at that time rehearsing the tragedy of CEdipe, 
which was performed on the 18th of November, 1718, with great 
success. The daring flights of philosophy introduced by the poet 
into this profoundly and terribly religious subject excited the 
enthusiasm of the roues ; Voltaire was well received by the Eegent, ^jg acts of 
who granted him an honorarium. " Monseigneur," said Voltaire, impru- 
" I should consider it very kind if his Majesty would be pleased ^^nce. 
to provide henceforth for my board, but I beseech your Highness 
to provide no more for my lodging." Voltaire's acts of imprudence 
were destined more than once to force him into leaving Paris ; ha 
all hia life preserved such a horror of prison that it made him 

LL 2 



5i6 History of France. 

commit more than one platitude. " I have a mortal aversion for 
prison," he wrote in 1734; once more, however, he was to be an 
inmate of the Bastille. 

Launched upon the most brilliant society, everywhere courted 
and flattered, Voltaire was constantly at work, displaying the 
marvellous suppleness of his mind by shifting from the tragedies 
of Artemise and Marianne, which failed, to the comedy oi L'lndis- 
cret, to numerous charming epistles, and lastly to the poem of La 
Henriade, which he went on carefully revising, reading fragments 
of it as he changed his quarters from castle to castle. 
Voltaire in j^fter another visit to the Bastille, he passed three years in 
England, engaged in learning English and finishing La Henriade, 
which he published by subscription in 1727. Touched by the 
favour shown by English society to the author and the poem, he 
dedicated to the queen of England his new work, which was 
entirely consecrated to the glory of France ; three successive 
editions were disposed of in less than three weeks. Lord Boling- 
broke, having returned to England and been restored to favour, did 
potent service to his old friend, who lived in the midst of tliat 
Keturns to literary society in which Pope and Swift held sway. When, in the 
France. month of Marcli, 1729, Voltaire at last obtained permission to 
revisit France, he had worked much without bringing out anything. 
The riches he had thus amassed appeared ere long : before the end 
of the year 1731 he put Brutus on the stage, and began his publi- 
cation of the Histoire de Charles XIL ; he was at the same tin^e 
giving the finishing touch to jEj-ijphyle and La Mart de Cesar. 
Zaire, Avritten in -a few weeks, was played for the first time on the 
13th of August, 1732. 

Voltaire had just inaugurated the great national tragedy of his 
country, as he had likewise given it the only national epic 
attempted in France since the Chansons de geste ; by one of those 
equally sudden and imprudent reactions to which he was always 
subject, it was not long before he himself damaged his own success 
by the publication of his Lettres pliilosophiques sur les Anylais. 

The light and mocking tone of these letters, the constant com- 
parison between the two peoples, with many a gibe at the English, 
but always turning to their advantage, the preference given to the 
philosophical system of Newton over that of Descartes, lastly the 
attacks upon religion concealed beneath the cloak of banter — all 
this was more than enough to ruffle the tranquillity of Cardinal 
Fleury. The book was brought before Parliament : Voltaire was 
disquieted. He ran, first, for refuge to Bale, then to the castle of 
Cirey, to the marchioness da Cbatelet's, a woman as learned as she 



Madame du Chdtelet. 517 

was impassioned, devoted to literature, physics and mathematics, Voltaire 
and tenderly attached to Voltaire, whom she enticed along with jjadame 
her into the paths of science. For fifteen years Madame du du Cha- 
Chatelet and Cirey ruled supreme over the poet's life. There ^^^^t" 
began a course of metaphysics, tales, tragedies ; Ahire, Merope, 
Maliomet were composed at Cirey and played with ever increasing 
success. Pope Benedict XIV. had accepted the dedication of 
Maliomet, which Voltaire had addressed to him in order to cover 
the freedoms of his piece. Every now and then, terrified in 
consequence of some bit of anti-religious rashness, he took flight, 
going into hiding at one time to the court of Lorraine beneath 
the wing of King Stanislaus, at another time in Holland, at a 
palace belonging to the king of Prussia, the Great Frederick, 

Madame du Chatelet died on the 4th of September, 1749, at 
Luneville, where she then happened to be with Voltaire. Their 
intimacy had experienced many storms, yet the blow was a cruel 
one for the poet ; in losing Madame du Chatelet he was losing the 
centre and the guidance of his life. For a while he spoke of 
"burying himself with Dom Calmet in the abbey of Senones ; then 
he would be off to England : he ended by returning to Paris, sum- 
moning to his side a widowed niece, Madame Denis, a woman of 
coarse wit, and full of devotion to him, who was fond of the drama, 
and played her uncle's pieces on the little theatre which he had 
fitted up in his rooms. 

Despite the lustre of that fame which was attested by the 
frequent attacks of his enemies as much as by the admiration of 
his friends, Voltaire was displeased with his sojourn at Paris, and 
weary of the Court and the men of letters. The king had always 
exhibited towards him a coldness which the poet's adulation had 
not been able to overcome ; he had offended Madame de Pompa- 
dour, who had but lately been well disposed towards him ; the 
religious circle, ranged around the queen and the dauphin, was 
of course hostile to him. "The place of historiographer to the 
king was but an empty title," he says himself : " I wanted to make 
it a reality by working at the history of the war of 1741 ; but, in 
spite of my work, Moncrif had admittance to his Majesty and I 
had not." 

In tracing the tragic episodes of the war, Voltaire, set as his Vauve- 
mind was on the royal favour, had wanted in the first place to pay iiargaes 
homage to the friends he had lost. It was in the " eulogium of 
the officers who fell in the campaign of 1741 " that he touchingly 
called attention to the memory of Vauvenargues. He, born at Aix 
on the ^th of August, 1715, died of his wounds, at Paris, in 1747. 



5i8 



History of France. 



Voltaire 
and the 
kii)gof 
Prussia. 



Poor and proud, resigning himself witli a sigh to idleness and 
obscurity, the young officer had written merely to relieve his mind. 
His friends had constrained him to publish a little book, one only, 
the Iniroductwn a la connaissance de Vesprit humain, suivie de 
reflexions et de maximes. Its success justified their affectionate 
hopes : delicate minds took keen delight in the first essays of Vau- 
venargues. Hesitating between religion and philosophy, with a 
palpable leaning towards the latter, ill and yet bravely bearing 
the disappointments and sufferings of his life, Vauvenargues was 
already expiring at thirty years of age, when Provence was in- 
vaded by the enemy. The humiliation of his country and the 
peril of his native province roused him from his tranquil melan- 
choly : " All Provence is in arms," he wrote to his friend Fauris 
de St. Vincent, " and here am I quite quietly in my chimney- 
corner ; the bad state of my eyes and of my health is not sufficient 
excuse for me, and I ought to be where all the gentlemen of the 
province are. Send me word then, I beg, immediately whether 
there is still any employment to be had in our newly raised levies 
and whether I should be sure to be employed if I were to go to 
Provence." Before his friend's answer had reached Vauvenargues, 
the Austrians and the Piedmontese had been forced to evacuate 
Provence ; the dying man remained in his chimney-corner, where 
he soon expired, leaving amongst the public and still more amongst 
those who had known him personally the impression of great 
promise gadly extinguished. " It was his fate," says his faithful 
biographer, M. Gilbert, " to be always opening his wings and to be 
unable to take flight." 

Voltaire, quite on the contrary, was about to take a fresh 
flight. After several rebuffs and long opposition on the part of the 
eiohteen ecclesiastics who at that time had seats in the French 
Academy, he had been elected to it in 1746. In 1750, he offered 
himself at one and the same time for the Academy of Sciences 
and the Academy of Inscriptions : he failed in both candidatures. 
This mishap filled the cup of his ill-humour. For a long time 
past Frederick II. had been offering the poet favours which he had 
long refused, The disgust he experienced at Paris through his 
insatiable vanity made him determine upon seeking another arena ; 
after having accepted a pension and a place from the king of 
Prussia, Voltaire set oat for Berlin. He was received there with 
enthusiasm and as sovereign of the little court of philosophers; 
but his intimacy with Frederick II. did not last long ; it had for a 
while done honour to both of them, it had ended by betraying the 
pettinesses and the meannesses natural to the king as well as to 



Voltaire and his difficulties. 519 

the poet. Frederick did not remain without anxiety on the score 
of Voltaire's rancour ; Voltaire dreaded nasty diplomatic proceed- 
ings on the part of the king ; he had been threatened with as 
much by Lord Keith, Milord Marechal, as he was called on the 
Continent from the hereditary title he had lost in his own country 
through his attachment to the cause of the Stuarts : — 

" Let us see in what countries M. de Voltaire has not had some Voltai'-e's 
squabble or made himself many enemies," said a letter to Madame 
Denis fi-om the great Scotch lord when he had entered Erederick's 
service : " every country where the Inquisition prevails must be 
mistrusted by him ; he would put his foot in it sooner or later. 
The Mussulmans must be as little pleased with his Mahomet as 
good Christians were. He is too old to go to China and turn 
mandarin ; in a word, if he is wise, there is no place but France 
for him. He has friends there, and you will have him with you.. 
for the rest of his days ; do not let him shut himself out from the 
pleasure of returning thither, for you are quite aware that, if ha 
were to indulge in speech and epigrams offensive to the king my 
master, a word which the latter might order me to speak to the 
court of France would suffice to prevent M. de Voltaire from re- 
turning, and he would be sorry for it when it was too late." 

Voltaire was already in France, but he dared not venture to 
Paris. Mutilated, clumsy or treacherous issues of the Ahi-ege ds 
r Histoire universelle had already stirred the bile of the clergy ; 
there were to be SBan in circulation copies of La Pucelle, a dis- 
gusting poem which the author had been keeping back and bring- 
ing out alternately for several years past. Voltaire fled from Colmar, uq tii^^s 
where the Jesuits held sway, to Lyons, where he found Marshal fright. 
Richelieu, but lately his protector and always his friend, who was 
repairing to his government of Languedoc. Cardinal Tencin re- 
fused to receive the poet,, who regarded^ this sudden severity as a 
sign of the feelings of the court towards him. " The king told 
Madame de Pompadour that he did not want me to go to Paris ; 
I am of his Majesty's opinion, I don't want to go to Paris," wrote 
Voltaire to the marquis of Paulmy. He took fright and sought 
refuge in Switzerland, where he soon settled on the lake of Geneva, 
pending his purchase of the estate of Ferney in the district of Gex 
and that of Tourney in Burgundy. He was henceforth fixed, free 
to pass from France to Switzerland and from Switzerland to France; 
in the comparative security which he thought he possessed, he 
gave scope to all his free-thinking, which had but lately been often, 
cloaked according to circumstances. In the great campaign against 
Christianity undertaken by the philosophers, Voltaire, so long a 



520 History of France, 

wavering ally, will henceforth fight in the' foremost ranks ; it ia 
he who shouts to Diderot, "Squelch the thing {lEcrasez Vinfdme)\" 
The masks are off, and the fight is bare-faced ; the Encyclopsedists 
march out to the conquest of_the world in the name of reason, 
humanity and free-thinking ; even when he has ceased to work at 
the Encydojpcedia, Yoltaire marches with them. 

The Essai sur VHistoire generale et les Moeurs was one of the 
first broadsides of this new anti-religious crusade. " Voltaire will 
never write a good history," Montesquieu used to say : " he is like 
the monks, who do not write for the subject of which they treat, 
but for the glory of their order : Voltaire writes for his convent." 
Takes the '^^^ same intention betrayed itself in every sort of work that issued 
lead in the at that time from the hermitage of Delices, the poem on Le Trem- 
crasade hlement de terre de Lisbonne, the drama of Socrate, the satire of 
religion. . the Pauvre Diable, the sad story of Candide, led the way to a 
series of publications every day more and more violent against the 
Christian faith. The tragedy of VOrphelin de la Chine and that of 
Tancrede, the quarrels with Freron, with Lefranc de Pompignan, 
and lastly with Jean Jacques Eousseau, did not satiate the devour- 
ing activity of the Fatriarcli, as he was called by the knot of 
philosophers. 

Innate love of justice and horror of fanaticism had inspired 
Voltaire Avith his zeal on behalf of the Galas family and other 
persecuted Protestants ; a more personal feeling, a more profound 
sympathy caused his grief and his dread when Chevalier de la 
Barre, accused of having mutilated a crucifix, was condemned, in 
His love of 1'''^^' ^^ capital punishment ; the scepticism of the eighteenth cen- 
j us lice. tury had sudden and terrible reactions towards fanatical violence, 
as a protest and a pitiable struggle against the doubt which was 
invading it on all sides ; the chevalier was executed ; he was not 
twenty years old. He was an infidel and a libertine, like the 
majority of the young men of his day and of his age ; the crime he 
expiated so cruelly was attributed to reading bad books, which liad 
, corrupted him. "I am told," writes Voltaire to D'Alerabert, "that 
they said at their examination that they had been led on to the 
act of madness they committed by the works of the Encyclopaedists. 
I can scarcely believe it ; these madmen don't read ; and certainly 
no philosopher would have counselled profanation. Tlie matter is 
important ; try to get to the bottom of so odious and dangerous a 
report." 

Voltaire reigned peacefully, however, over his little empire at 
Ferney, courted from afar by all the sovereigns of Europe who 
made any profession of philosophy, " I have a sequence of foiii 



Death of Voltaire. — His character. $21 

kings " (brelan de roi quatrihne), he would say with a laugh when 
he counted his letters from royal personages. The empress of 
Russia, Catherine II., had dethroned, in his mind, the Great 
Frederick. He was destined to die at Paris ; there he found the 
last joys of his life,i and there he shed the last rays of his glory, 

Voltaire's incessant activity bore many fruits which survived Voltaire's 
him ; he contributed powerfully to the triumph of those notions General 
of humanity, justice and freedom, which, superior to his own ideal, survey of 
did honour to the eighteenth century ; he became the model of a ^acter. ' 
style, clear, neat, brilliant, the natural exponent of his own mind, 
far more than of the as yet confused hopes and aspirations of his 
age ; he defended the rights of common sense and sometimes with- 
stood the an ti religious passion of his friends, but he blasted both 
minds and souls with his sceptical gibes ; his bitter and at the 
same time temperate banter disturbed consciences which would 
have been revolted by the materialistic doctrines of the Encyclo- 
paedists ; the circle of infidelity widened under his hands ; his 
disciples were able to go beyond him on the fatal path he had 
opened to them. Voltaire has remained the true representative 
of the mocking and stone-flinging phase of free-thinking, knowing 
nothing of the deep yearnings any more than of the supreme 
wretchlessness of the human soul, which it kept imprisoned within 
the narrow limits of earth and time. At the outcome from the 
bloody slough of the French Revolution and from the chaos it 
caused in men's souls, it was the infidelity of Voltaire which 
remained at the bottom of the scepticism and moral disorder of 
the France of our day. The demon which torments her is even 
more Voltairian than materialistic. 

Other influences, more sincere and at the same time more dan- 
gerous, were simultaneously undermining men's minds. The group 
of Encyclopaedists, less prudent and less temperate than Voltaire, 
flaunted openly the flag of revolt. At the head marched Denis 
Diderot, boi'n in 1715, the most daring of all, the most genuinely 
ati'ected by his own ardour, without perhaps being the most sure 
of his ground in his negations. He was an original and exuberant 
nature, expansively open to all new impressions ; it was in con- 
junction with his friends and in community of ideas that Diderot and the 
undertook the immense labour of the EncyclopcBdia. Having, in Encyclo- 
the first instance, received a commission from a publisher to trans- ^ 
late the English collection of [Ephraim] Chambers, Diderot was 
impressed with a desire to unite in one and the same collection all 
the eff'orts and all the talents of his epoch, so as to render joint 
homage to the rapid progress of science. Won over by his enthu- 



522 History of France. 

siasm, D'Alembert consented to share the task ', and he wrote the 
beautiful exposition in the introduction. Voltaire sent his articles 
from Les Delices. The Jesuits had proposed to take upon themselves 
a certain number of questions, but their co-operation was declined : 
it was a monument to philosophy that the Encyclopaedists aspired 
to raise : the clergy were in commotion at seeing the hostile army, 
till then uncertain and unhanded, rally organized and disciplined 
around this vast enterprise. An early veto, soon, however, taken 
off, compelled the philosophers to a certain moderation : Voltaire 
ceased writing for the Eacydopcedia, it was not sufficiently free- 
going for him: "You admit articles worthy of the Trevoux journal," 
Severity of he said to D'Alembert. New severities on the part of the Par- 
the govern- Hament and the grand council dealt a blow to the philosophers 
before long : the editors' privilege was revoked. Orders were given 
to seize Diderot's papers. Lamoigncn de Malesherbes, who was at 
that time director of the press, and favourable to freedom without 
ever having abused it in thought or action, sent him secret warn- 
ing. Diderot ran home in consternation. " What's to be done ?" 
he cried : " how move all my manuscripts in twenty-four hours ? 
I haven't time even to make a selection. And, above all, where 
find people who would and can take charge cf them safely V "Send 
them aU to me," replied M. de Malesherbes : *' nobody will come 
thither to look for them." 

Feeble governments are ill served even by their worthiest ser- 
vants ; the severities ordered against the £ncydopcedia did not 
stop its publication ; D'Alembert, however, weary of the struggle, 
had ceased to take part in the editorship. An infidel and almost a 
materialist by the geometer's rule, who knows no power but the 
laws of mathematics, he did not carry into anti-religious strife the 
bitterness of Voltaire, or the violence of Diderot. More and more 
absorbed by pure science, which he never neglected save for the 
French Academy, whose perpetual secretary he had become, 
D'Alembert left to Diderot alone the care of continuing the Ency- 
A.D. 1783. clopcedia. When he died, in 1783, at fifty-six years of age, the 
Death of -^y^ork had been finished nearly twenty years. In spite of the bad 
faith of publishers, who mutilated articles to renaer them acceptable, 
in spite of the condemnation of the clergy and the severities of 
the councU, the last volumes of the Encydo;p(JBdia had appeared in 
1765. 

This immense work, unequal and confused as it was, a medley of 
various and often ill-assorted elements, undertaken for and directed 
to the fixed end of an aggressive emancipation of thought, had 
not sufficed to absorb the energy and powers of Diderot. The stage 



Bujfon. 523 

occupied largely his attention ; he sought to introduce reforms, the 

fruit of his own thought as well as of imitation of the Germans, 

which lie had not perhaps sufficiently considered. For the classic 

tragedies, the heritage of which Voltaire received from the hands 

of Racine, Diderot aspired to substitute the natural drama. His The "natu- 

two attempts in that style, Le Perede Famille and Le Fils nature!, ^^^ drama " 

had hut little success in France, and contributed to dcvelope in 

Germany the school already founded by Lesaing. Diderot died on 

the 29th of July, 1784, still poor, an invalid for some time past, 

surrounded to the end by his friends, who rendered back to him 

that sincere and devoted alfectiou which he made the pride of his 

life. The charm of liis charactcsr had often caused people to forget 

his violence, which he himself no longer remembered the next day. 

" I should lilve to know this hot-headed metaphysician," was tiie 
remark made to Bufifon by President De Brosses, who happened to 
be then at Paiis ; and he alter wards added : " He is a nice fellow, 
very pleasant, very amiable, a great philosopher, a mighty arguer, 
but a maker of perpetual digressions. Yesterday he made quite five 
and twenty between nine o'clock and one, during which time he 
remained in my room. Oh ! how much more lucid is Buffon than 
all those gentry ! " 

The magistrate's mind understood and appreciated the great B^ffoj. 
naturalist's genius. Diderot felt in his own lashion the charm of 
nature, but, as was said by Chevalier Chastellux, " his ideas got 
drunk and set to work chasing oiie another." The ideas of Buffon, 
on the other hand, came out in the majestic order of a system 
under powerful organization and informed as it were with the very 
secrets of the Creator. " The general liistory of the world," he says, 
*' ought to precede the special history of its pioductions ; and the 
details of singular facts touching the life and habits of animals, or 
touching the culture and vegetation of plants, belong perhaps less 
to natural history than do the general results of th3 observations 
which have been made on the different materials which compose 
the terrestrial globe, on the elevatiuns, the depressions and the 
unevennesses of it's form, on the movement of the seas, on the 
trending of mountains, on the position, of quarries, on the rapidity 
and effects of the currents of the sea — this is nature on the grand 
scale." 

M. Flourens truly said : " Buffon aggrandises every subject he 
touches." 

It was in his dignified and studious retirement at Mont>>ard that 
Buiion, after having transformed, and almost created the Paris Jar- 
din du Eoi, quietly passed his long life. Born in 1707, he died 



5 24 History of France. 

on the Xi'Oa. of April, 1788. "I dedicated," he says, "twelve, 
nay fourteen, hours to study ; it Avas my whole pleasure. In 
truth, I devoted myself to it far more than I troubled myself 
about fame ; fame comes afterwards, if it may, and it nearly always 
does." 

Buffon did not lack fame ; on the appearance of the first three 
volumes of his Histoire naturelle, published in 1749, the breadth of 
on natural ^^^ views, the beauty of his language and the strength of his mind 
history. excited general curiosity and admiration. The Sorbonne was in a 
flutter at certain bold propositions ; Buffon, without being discon- 
certed, took pains to avoid condemnation. " I took tbe liberty," 
he says in a letter to M. Leblant, " of writing to the duke of Mver- 
nais (then ambassador at Eome), who has replied to me in the 
most polite and most obliging way in the world ; I hope, therefore, 
that my book will not be put in the Index, and, in truth, I have 
done all I could not to deserve it and to avoid theological squabbles, 
■which I fear far more than I do the criticisms of physicists and 
geometricians." " Oat of a hundred and twenty assembled doctors," 
he adds before long, " I had a hundred and fifteen, and their resolu- 
tion even contains eulogies which I did not expect." Despite cer- 
tain boldnesses which had caused anxiety, the Sorbonne had reason 
to compliment the great naturalist. The unity of the human race 
as well as its superior dignity were already vindicated in these 
first efforts of Buffon's genius, and his mind never lost sight of this 
great verity. He continued his work, adroitly availing himself of 
.. ^^^ the talent and researches of the numerous co-operators whom he 

assistants. ^^^ managed to gather about him, directing them all with inde- 
fatigable vigilance in their labours and their observations. " Genius 
is but a greater aptitude for perseverance," he used to say, himself 
justifying his definition by the assiduity of his studies. 

To the Theorie de la Terre, the Idees generates sur les Animavx 
and the Histoire de V Homme, already published when Buffon was 
elected by the French Academy (1754), succeeded the twelve 
volumes of the Histoire des Quadriqoedes, a masterpiece of luminous 
classifications and incomparable descriptions ; eight volumes on 
Oiseaux appeared subsequently, a short time before the Histoire des 
Mineraux ; lastly, a few years before his death, Buffon gave to the 
world the ^poques de la Nature. " As in civil history one con- 
sults titles, hunts up medals, deciphers antique inscriptions to deter- 
mine the epochs of revolutions amongst mankind, and to fix the 
date of events in the moral world, so, in natural history, we must 
ransack the archives of the universe, drag from the entrails of the 
earth the olden monuments, gather together their ruins and coUect 




BUFFON. 



Buffons theoi'ies. 525 

into a body of proofs all tlie indications of physical changes that 
can guide us hack to the different ages of nature. It is the only 
way of fixing certain points in the immensity of space and of 
placing a certain number of memorial-stones on the endless road 
of time." 

" This is what I perceive with my mind's eye," Buffon would say, 
" thus forming a chain which, from the summit of Time's ladder, 
descends right down to us." " This man," exclaimed Hume, with 
an admiration which surprised him out of his scepticism, " this man 
gives to things which no human eye has seen a probability almost 
equal to evidence." 

Some of Bufifon's theories have been disputed by his successors' Buffon 
science ; as D'Alembert said of Descartes : " If he was mistaken theories, 
about the laws of motion, he was the first to divine that there must 
be some." Buffon divined the epochs of nature, and by the intui- 
tion of his genius, absolutely unshackled by any religious prejudice, 
he involuntarily reverted to the account given in Genesis : " We 
are persuaded," he says, " independently of the authority of the 
sacred books, that man was created last, and that he only came to 
wield the sceptre of the earth when that earth was found worthy of 
his sway." 

Buffon was still working at eighty years of age ; he had under- 
taken a dissertation on style, a development of his splendid recep- 
tion-speech at the French Academy. Great sorrows had crossed his 
life ; married late to a young wife whom he loved, he lost her early; 
she left him a son, brought up under his wing and the object of 
his constant solicitude. Just at the time of sending him to school, His 

he wrote to Madame Daubenton, wife of his able and learned co- domestic 

life 
operator : " I expect Buflfonet on Sunday ; I have arranged all his 

little matters : he will have a private room, with a closet for his 

man-servant ; I have got him a tutor in the school-house itself, and 

a little companion of his own age ; I do not think that he will be 

at all unhappy." And, at a later date, when he is expecting this son, 

who has reached man's estate and has been travelling in Europe : 

" My son has just arrived ; the empress and the grand duke have 

treated him very well and we shall have some fine minerals, the 

collection of which is being at this moment completed. I confess 

that anxiety about his return has taken away my sleep and the 

power of thinking." 

"When the young Count de Buflfon, an officer in the artillery and 

at first warmly favourable to the noble professions of the French 

Eevolution, had, like his peers, to mount the scaffold of the Terror, 

he damned with one word the judges who profaned in his person 



526 



History of France. 



The 
great 
men.' 



French 



his father's glory. " Citizens," he exclaimed from the fatal car, 
"my name is Buflfon." With less respect for the riglits of genius 
than was shown by the Algerian pirates who let pass, without 
opening them, the chests directed to the great naturalist, the 
executioner of the Committee of public safety cut oflp his son's head. 
Five " How many great men do you reckon % " Buffon was asked one 
day. " Five," answered he at once : " Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, 
Montesquieu and myself." 

This self -appreciation, fostered by the homage of his contem- 
poraries, which showed itself in Buffon undisguisedly with an air of 
ingenuous satisfaction, had poisoned a life already extinguished ten 
years before amidst the bitterest agonies. Taking up arms against 
a society in which he had not found his proper place, Jean Jacques 
Eousseau (born at Geneva, 28th of June, 1712) had attacked the 
present as well as the past, the Encyclopaedists as well as the old 
social organization. It was from the first his distinctive trait to 
voluntarily create a desert around him. The eighteenth century 
was in its nature easily seduced ; liberal, genrrous and open to 
allurements, it delighted in intellectual contentions, even the most 
dangerous and the most daring ; it welcomed with alacrity all 
those who thus contributed to its pleasures. The charming 
'•salons." drawing-rooms of Madame Geoffrin, of Madame du Deffand, of 
Madlle. Lespinasse, belonged of right to philosophy. " Being men 
of the world as well as of letters, the philosophers of the eighteenth 
century had passed their lives in the pleasantest and most brilliant 
regions of that society which w^as so much attacked by them. 
It had welcomed them, made them famous : they had mingled in 
all the pleasures of its elegant and agreeable existence ; they 
shared in all its tastes, its manners, all the refinements, all the 
susceptibilities of a civilization at the same time old and reju- 
venated, aristocratic and literary ; they were of that old regimen 
which was demolished by their hands. The philosophical circle 
was everywhere, amongst the people of the court, of the church, 
of the long robe, of finance ; haughty here, complaisant there, at 
one time indoctrinating, at another amusing its hosts, but every- 
where young, active, confident, recruiting and battling everywhere, 
penetrating and fascinating the whole of society " [M. Guizot, 
Madame la comtesse de Rumfoi'd]. Eousseau never took his place 
in this circle ; in this society, he marched in front like a pioneer of 
new times, attacking tentatively all that he encountered on his 
way. " Nobody was ever at one and the same time more factious 
and more dictatorial," is the clever dictum of M. Saint Marc 
Girardin. 



Rousseau, 527 

In his 'DiscouTs sur les Sciences et Jes Arts, Kotisseau showed the Rousseau. 
characteristic which invariably distinguished him from the philoso- 
phers, and which ended by establishing deep enmity between them 
and him ; the eighteenth century espied certain evils, certain sores 
in the social and political condition, believed in a cure and blindly 
relied on the power of its own theories. Rousseau, more earnest, 
often more sincere, made a better diagnosis of the complaint, he 
described its horrible character and the dangerousness of it, he saw 
no remedy and he pointed" none out. Profound and grievous 
impotence, whose utmost hope is an impossible recurrence to the 
primitive state of savagery ! *' In the private opinion of our adver- 
saries," says M. Eoyer-Collard eloquently, " it was a thoughtless 
thing, on the great day of creation, to let man loose, a free and in- 
telligent agent, into the midst of the universe ; thence the mis- 
chief and the mistake. A higher wisdom comes forward to repair 
the error of Providence, to restrain his thoughtless liberality and to 
render to prudently mutilated mankind the service of elevating it 
to the happy innocence of the brute." 

Eefore Rousseau, and better than he, Christianity had recognized 
and proclaimed the evil ; but it had, at the same time, announced 
to the world a remedy and a Saviour. 

Henceforth Rousseau had chosen his own road : giving up the 
drawing-rooms and the habits of that elegant society for which he 
was not born and the admiration of which had developed his pride, 
he made up his mind to live independent, copying music to get his „. . . 
bread, now and then smitten with the women of the world who pendent 
sought him out in his retirement, in love with Madame d'Epinay ^^^' 
and Madame d'Houdetot, anon returning to the coarse servant- 
wench whom he had but lately made his wife and whose children 
he had put in the foundling-hospital. Music at that time absorbed 
all minds : Rousseau brought out a little opera entitled Le Devin de 
village (The Village Wizard), which had a great success. It was 
played at Fontainebleau before the king. The emotions of the 
eighteenth century were vivid and easily roused ; fastening upon 
everything without any earnest purpose and without any great 
sense of responsibility it grew as hot over a musical dispute as over 
the gravest questions of morality or philosophy. Grimm had 
attacked French music, Rousseau supported his thesis by a Lettre 
eur la Musique. It was the moment of the great quarrel between 
the Parliament and the Clergy. " When my letter appeared, there 
was no more excitement save against me," says Rousseau : " it was 
such that the nation has never recovered from it. When people 
read that this pamphlet probably prevented a revolution in the 



528 History of France. 

State, thoy will fancy they mxist be dreaming." And Grimm adds 
in his correspondence : "The Italian actors who have been playing 
for the last ten months on the stage of the Opera de Paris and who 
are called here houffons, have so absorbed the attention of Paris 
that the Parliament, in spite of all its measures and proceedings, 
which should have earned it celebrity, could not but fall into com- 
plete oblivion." 
" Discours Eousseau had just printed his Discours siir VInegalite des con- 
^^''^y}^^' ditions, a new and violent picture of the corruptions of human 
society. " Inequality being almost nil in a state of nature,'' he 
says, " it derives its force and increment from the development of 

our faculties and from the progress of the human mind 

according to the poet it is gold and silver, but according to the 
philosopher it is iron and corn which have civilized men and 
ruined the human race." 

The singularity of his paradox had worn off ; Epusseau no 
longer astounded, he shocked the good sense as well as the 
aspirations, superficial or generous, of the eighteenth century : the 
Discours sur VInegalite des conditions was not a success. It was 
at the Hermitage, under Madame d'Epinay's roof, that he began the 
tale of La Nouvelle Heloise, which was finished at .Marshal de 
Montmorency's, when the susceptible and cranky temper of the 
philosopher had justified the malevolent predictions of Grimm. 
The latter had but lately said to Madame d'Epinay : "I see in 
Eousseau nothing but pride concealed everywhere about him ; 
you will do him a very sorry service in giving him a home at the 
Hermitage, but you will do yourself a still more sorry one. Soli- 
tude will complete the blackening of his imagination ; he will fancy 
all his friends unjust, ungrateful, and you first of all, if you once 
refuse to be at his beck and call ; he will accuse you of having 
bothered him to live under your roof and of having prevented 
him from yielding to the wishes of his country. I already see the 
germ of these accusations in the turn of the letters you have 
shown me." 

Eousseau quarrelled with Madame d'Epinay, and shortly after- 
wards with all the philosophical circle : Grimm, Helvetius, 
D'Holbach, Diderot ; his quarrels with the last were already of 
old date, they had made some noise. " Good God ! " said the 
duke of Castries in astonishment, " wherever I go I hear of 
nothing but this Eousseau and this Diderot ! Did anybody ever 1 
Fellows who are nobody, fellows who have no house, who lodge on 
a third floor ! Positively, one can't stand that sort of thing ! " 
The rupture was at last complete, it extended to Grimm as well 



Rousseau persecuted. 5^9 

as to Diderot. " Nobody can put himseH in my place," wrote 
Rousseau, "and nobody will see that I am a being'apart, who has 
not the character, the maxims, the resources of the rest of them, 
and who must not be judged by their rules." 

Rousseau was right ; he was a being apart ; and the philo- 
sophers could not forgive him for his independence. His merits 
as well as his defects annoyed them equally : liis Lettre centre les 
Spectacles had exasperated Voltaire ; isolated henceforth by the good 
as well as by the evil tendencies of his nature, Jean Jacques stood 
alone against the philosophical circle which he had dropped as well Rousseau 
as against the protestant or catholic clergy whose creed she often .^? f 
offended. He had just published Le Gontrat Social, " The Gospel," 
says M. Saint-Marc Girardin, " of the theory as to the sovereignty 
of the State representing the sovereignty of the people." The 
governing povvers of the time had some presentiment of its danger ; 
they had vaguely comprehended what weapons might be sought 
therein by revolutionary instincts and interests ; their anxiety and 
their anger as yet brooded silently ; the director of publications {de 
la lihrairie), M. de Maiesherbes, was one of the friends and almost 
one of the disciples of Rousseau whom he shielded ; he himself 
corrected the proofs of the ^mile which Rousseau had just 
huished. The book had barely begun to appear, when, on the 8th 
of June, 1762, Rousseau was awakened by a message from la 
•^larochale de Luxembourg : the Parliament had ordered ^mile to 
be burned and its author arrested. Rousseau took flight, reckoning 
upon finding refuge at Geneva. The influence of the French 
government pursued him thither; the grand council condemned 
^mile. One single copy had arrived at Geneva : it was this which 
was burned by the hand of the common hangman, nine days after 
the burning at Paris in the Place de Greve. *' The Gontrat Social 
has received its whipping on the back of l^mile" was the saying 
at Geneva. " At the instigation of M. de Yoltaire they have 
avenged upon me the cause of God," Jean Jacques declared. 

Rousseau rashly put his name to his books ; Voltaire was more Voltaire's 
prudent. One day, having been imprisoned for some verses which prudence, 
were not his, he had taken the resolution to impudently repudiate the 
paternity of his own works : " You must never publish anything 
under your own name," he wrote to Helvetius ; " La Pucelle was 
none of my doing, of course. Master Joly de Fleury will make a 
fine thing of his requisition ; I shall tell him that he is a calum- 
niator, that La Pucelle is his own doing, which he wants to put 
down to me out of spite." 

Rousseau died at the pavilion of Ermenonville, which had 

M M 



5 3^ History of Francp.. 

heen offered to him by M. de Girardin, he died there at the age 
of sixty-six, sinking even more beneath imaginary woes than under 
the real sorrows and bitter deceptions of his life. The dispropor- 
tion between his intellect and his character, between the bound- 
less pride and the impassioned weakness of his spirit, had little 
by little estranged his friends and worn out the admiration of his 
contemporaries. By his writings Eousseau acted more powerfully 
upon posterity than upon his own times : his personality had 
ceased to do his genius injustice. 
Character He belonged moreover and by anticipation to a new era ; from 
oittousseau. ^.j^g restless working of his mind, as well as from his moral and 
political tendencies, he Avas no longer of the eighteenth century pro- 
perly speaking, though the majority of the philosophers out-lived 
him ; his work was not their work, their world was never his. He 
had attempted a noble reaction, but one which was fundamentally 
and in reality impossible. The impress of hisi early education had 
never been thoroughly effaced : he believed in God, he had been 
nurtured upon the Gospel in childhood, he admired the morality 
and the life of Jesus Christ ; but he stopped at the boundaries of 
adoration and submission. " The spirit of Jean Jacques Eousseau 
inhabits the moral world, but not that other which is above," 
M. Joubert has said in his I*ensees. The weapons were insufficient 
and the champion was too feeble for the contest ; the spirit of the 
moral world was vanquished as a foregone conclusion. Against the 
systematic infidelity which was more and more creeping over the 
eighteenth century, the Christian faith alone, with all its forces, 
could fight and triumph. But the Christian faith was obscured and 
enfeebled, it clung to the vessel's rigging instead of defending its 
powerful hull ; the flood was rising meanwhile, and the dikes were 
breaking one after another. The religious belief of the Savoyard 
vi'iar, imperfect and inconsistent, such as it is set forth in Emile, 
and that sincere love of nature which was recovered by Eousseau 
in his solitude, remained powerless to guide the soul and regulate 
life. 

*' The eighteenth century " [M. Guizot, Melanges hiograpMques : 
{Madame la Comtesse de Mumford)], was far superior to all its 
sceptics, to all its cynics. What do I say ? Superior ? N'ay it was 
essentially opposed to them and continually gave them the lie. 
Despite the weakness of its morals, the frivolity of its forms, the 
mere dry bones of such and such of its doctrines, despite its critical 
and destructive tendency, it was an ardent and a sincere century, a 
century of faith and disinterestedness. It had faith in the truth, 
for it claimed the right thereof to reign in this world. It had faith 



Tlie Eighteenth Century. 53* 

in Immanity, for it recognized tlie right thereof to perfect itself, and 
yrould have had that right exercised without obstruction. It erred, 
it lost itself amidst this twofold confidence, it attempted what was 
far beyond its right and power; it misjudged the moral nature of 
man and the conditions of the social state. Its ideas as well as its 
works contracted the blemish of its views. But, granted so much, 
the original idea, dominant in the eighteenth century, the belief The eigh- 
that man, truth and society are made for one another, worthy of ^^^ an^^' 
one another and called upon to form a union, this correct and epoch of- 
salutary belief rises up and overtops all its history. That belief it ^°*'®* 
was the first to proclaim and would fain have realized. Hence its 
power and its popularity over the whole face of the earth. Hence, also 
to descend from great things to small, and from the destiny of man 
to that of the drawing-room, hence the seductiv ness of that epoch 
and the charm it scattered over social life. I^ever before were seen 
all the conditioiis, all the classes that form the flower of a great 
people, however diverse they might have been in their history and 
still were in their interests, thus forgetting their past, their per- 
sonality, in order to draw near to one another, to unite in a com- 
munion of the sweetest manners and solely occupied in pleasing 
one another, in rejoicing and hoping together during fifty years 
which were to end in the most terrible conflicts between them." 

At the death of King Louis XV., in 1774, the easy-mannered 
joyance, the peaceful and brilliant charm of fashionable and philo- 
S(-)phical society were reaching their end : the time of stern realities 
was approaching with long strides. 



H M 9 




CHAPTEE XV. 

Louig XVI.— (1775— 1789.) 

At the news that Louis XV. had just heaved h.is last sigh in the 
arms of his pious daughters, Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette Loth 
Hung themselves upon their knees, exclaiming, " God, protect us, 
direct us, we are too young." 

The monarch's youth did not scare the country, itself everywhere 
animated and excited by a breath of youth. There were congratu- 
lations on escaping from the well-known troubles of a regency ; the 
king's ingenuous inexperience, moreover, opened a vast field for the 
most contradictory hopes. The pliilosophers counted upon taking 
possession of the mind of a good young sovereign, who was said to 
liave his heart set upon his people's happiness ; the clergy and the 
Jesuits themselves expected every thing from the young prince's 
pious education; the old parliaments, mutilated, crushed down, 
began to raise up their heads again, whilst the economists were 
_ already preparing their most daring projects. Like literature, the 

tual state ^rts had got the start, in the new path, of the politicians and the 
of Prance, magistrates. ]\1 Turgot and M. de Malesherbes had not yet laid 
theii- enterprising hands upon the old fabric of French administra- 
tion, and already painting, sculpture, architecture, and music had 
shaken off the shackles of the past. The conventional graces of 
Vanloo, of Watteau, of Boucher, of Fragonard, had given place to 
a severer school. Greuze was putting upon canvas the characters 
and ideas of Diderot's Drame naturel ; but Vien, in France, was 



Louis XVI. '. 533 

seconding tlie efforts of Win cT? elm an arid of EapLael Mengs in Italy j 
he led his pupils back to the study of ancient art ; he had trained 
Eegnault, Vincent, Menageot, and lastly Louis David, destined to 
become the chief of the modern school ; Julien, Houdon, the last of 
the Coustous, were following the same road in sculpture : Soufflot, 
an old man by this time, was superintending the completion of the 
church of St. Genevieve, dedicated by Louis XV. to the comme- 
moration of his recovery at Metz, and destined, from the majestic 
simplicity of its lines, to the doubtful honour of becoming the Pan- 
theon of the revolution ; Servandoni had died a short time since, 
leaving to the church of St. Sulpice the care of preserving his 
memory ; everywhere vrere rising charming mansions imitated from First acts, 
the palaces of Eome. The painters, the sculptors and the archi- 
tects of France were sufficient for her glory ; only Gretry and Mon-- 
signy upheld the honour of that French music which was attacked 
by Grimm and by Jean Jacques Eousseau. ; but it was at Paris that 
the great quarrel went on between the Italians and the Germans : 
Piccini and Gliick divided society, wherein their rivalry excited 
violent passions. Everywhere and on all questions, intellectual 
movement was becoming animated with fresh ardour ; France was . ^ 
marching towards the region of storms, in the blindness of her con- 
fidence and joyance ; the atmosphere seemed purer since Madame 
Dubarry had been sent to a convent by one of the first orders of 
young Louis XVI. 

Already, however, farseeing spirits were disquieted ; scarcely had 
he mounted the throne, when the king summoned to his side, as 
his minister, M. de Maurepas, but lately banished by Louis XV., in , 
1749, on a charge of having tolerated, if not himself written, songs 
disrespectful towards Madame de Pompadour ; in the place of the 
duke of Aiguillon, who had the ministry of war and that of foreign 
aifairs both together, the count of Muy and the count of Vergennes 
were called to power. Some weeks later; the obscure minister of 
marine, M. de Boynes, made way for the superintendent of the 
district (generalite) of Limoges, M. Turgot. • 

Intimately connected with the, most esteemed magistrates and Turgot. 
economists, such as MM. Trudaine, Quesnay, and Gournay, at the 
same time that he was writing in the Encydopoddia, and constantly 
occupied in useful work, Turgot was not yet five and thirty when 
he was appointed superintendent of the district of Limoges. There, 
the rare faculties of his mind and his sincere love of good found 
their natural field ; the country was poor, crushed under imposts, 
badly intersected by roads badly kept, inhabited by an ignorant 
populace, violently hostile to the recruitment of the militia. He 



534 



Histojy of France, 



His career 
and views 
of reform. 



Maupeou 
retires. 



The Albe 
Terray 
obliged to 
refund. 



encouraged agriculture, distributed the talliages more equitably, 
amended the old roads and constructed new ones, abolished forced 
labour (corvees), provided for the wants of the poor and wretched 
during the dearth of 1770 and 1771, and declined, successively, 
the superintendentship of Eouen, of Lyons, and of Bor- 
deaux, in order that he might be able to complete the useful 
tasks he had begun at Limoges. It was from that district that he 
was called to a seat in the new cabinet. Scarcely had he been 
installed in the department of marine, and begun to conceive vast 
plans, when the late ministers of Louis XV. succumbed at last 
beneath the popular hatred , in the place of Abbe Terray, M. Turgot 
became comptroller-general. 

The old parliamentarians were triumphant ; at the same time as 
Abbe Terray, Chancellor Maupeou was disgraced, and the judicial 
system he had founded fell with him. Unpopular from the first, 
the Maupeou Parliament had remained in the nation's eyes the 
image of absolute power corrupted and corrupting. The suit 
between Beaumarchais and Councillor Goezman had contributed to 
decry it, thanks to the uproar the able pamphleteer had managed 
to cause ; the families of the former magistrates were powerful, 
numerous, esteemed, and they put pressure upon public opinion. 
Imperturbable and haughty as ever, Maupeou retired to his estate 
at Thuit, near the Andelys, where he drew up a justificatory 
memorandum of his ministry, which he had put into the king's 
hands, without ever attempting to enter the court or Paris again ; 
he died in the country, at the outset of the revolutionary storms, 
on the 29th of July, 1792, just as he had made the State a patriotic 
present of 800,000 livres. At the moment when the populace 
were burning him in ejBSgy in the streets of Paris together with 
Abbe Terray, when he saw the recall of the parliamentarians, and 
the work of his whole life destroyed, he repeated with his usual 
coolness : " If the king is pleased to lose his kingdom — well, he 
is master." 

Abbe Terray had been less proud, and was more harshly treated. 
It was in vain that he sought to dazzle the young king with ably 
prepared memorials ; he had to refund nearly 900,000 livres to the 
public treasury. Being recognized by the mob as he was passing 
over the Seine in a ferry boat, he had some difficulty in escaping 
from the hands of those who would have hurled him into the 



The contrast was great between the crafty and unscrupulous 
ability of the disgraced comptroller-general and the complete 
disinterestedness, large views, and noble desire of good which 



Turgofs financial schemes. 535 

animated his successor. After his first interview with the king, at 
Compiegne, M. Turgot wrote to Louis XVI. : — " Your Majesty has Turgot's 
been graciously pleased to permit me to place before your eyes the financial 
engagement you took upon yourself, to support me in the execution 
of plans of economy which are at all times, and now more than 
ever, indispensable. I confine myself for the moment, sir, to 
reminding you of these three expressions : — 1° N"o bankruptcies ; 
2° ]^o augmentation of imposts ; 3° l^o loans." M. Turgot set 
to work at once. Whilst governing his district of Limoges, he 
had matured numerous plans and shaped extensive theories. He 
belonged to his times and to the school of the philosophers as 
regarded his contempt for tradition and history ; it was to natural 
rights alone, to the innate and primitive requirements of mankind 
that he traced back his principles and referred as the basis for all 
his attempts. " He desired no more to reform old France ; he 
wanted a new France. Before ten years are over," he would say, 
" the nation will not be recognizable, thanks to enlightenment. 
This chaos will have assumed a distinct form. Your Majesty will 
have quite a new people, and the first of peoples." A profound 
error, which was that of the whole Eevolution, and the con- 
sequences of which would have been immediately fatal, if the 
powerful instinct of conservatism and of natural respect for the 
past had not maintained between the regimen which was crumbling 
away and the new fabric connexions more powerful and more 
numerous than their friends as well as their enemies were 
aware of. 

Two fundamental principles regulated the financial system of He is sap- 
M. Turgot, economy in expenditure and freedom in trade ; every- ported 1)7 
where he ferreted out abuses, abolishing useless offices and pay- "'^^^ 
ments, exacting from the entire administration that strict probity of 
which he set the example. Louis XVL supported him conscien- 
tiously at that time in all his reforms ; the public made fun of it. 
It was on account of his financial innovations that the comptroller- 
general particularly dreaded the return of the old Parliament, with 
which he saw himself threatened every day. " I fear opposition 
from the Parliament," he said to the king. " Fear nothing," 
replied the king warmly, " I will stand by you ; " and, passing 
over the objections of the best politician amongst his ministers, he 
yielded to M. de Maurepas, who yielded to public opinion. On 
the 12th of iN'ovember, 1774, the old Parliament was formally 
restored, subjected, however, to the same jurisdiction which had 
controlled the Maupeou Parliament. The latter had been sent to 
Versailles to form a grand coancil there. The restored magistrates 



53^ 



History of France. 



grumbled at the narrow limits imposed upon their authority ; the 
duke of Orleans, the duke of Chartres, the prince of Conti sup- 
ported their complaints ; it was in vain that the king for some time 
met them with refusals ; threats soon gave place to concessions ; 
and the parliaments everywhere reconstituted, enfeebled in the eyes 
of public opinion, but more than ever obstinate and Fronde-like, 
found themselves free to harass, without doing any good, the march 
of an administration becoming every day more difficult. " Your 
Parliament may make barricades," Lord Chesterfield had remarked 
contemptuously to Montesquieu, " it Mall never raise barriers.." 

M. Turgot, meanwhile, was continuing his labours, preparing a 
project for equitable redistribution of the talliage and his grand 
system of a graduated scale (Jiierarchie) of municipal assemblies, 
commencing with the parish, to culminate in a general meeting of 
delegates from each province ; he threatened, in the course of his 
reforms, the privileges of the noblesse and of the clergy, and gave 
his mind anxiously to the instruction of the people, whose condi- 
tion and welfare he wanted to siiaultaneously elevate and augment; 
already there was a buzz of murmurs against him, confined as yet 
to the courtiers, when the dearness of bread and the distress which 
ensued in the spring of 1775 furnished his adversaries with a 
convenient pretext. Up to that time the attacks had been cautious 
and purely theoreticah M. ISTecker, an able banker from Geneva, 
for a long while settled in Paris, hand and glove with the philo- 
sophers, and keeping up, moreover, a great establishment, had 
brought to the comptroller-general a work which he had just 
finished on the trade in grain ; on many points he did not share 
M. Turgot's opinions. " Be kind enough to ascertain for yourself," 
said the banker to the minister, " whether the. book can be 
published without inconvenience to the government." M. Turgot 
was proud and sometimes rude : " Publish, sir, publish," said he, 
without offering his hand to take the manuscript, " the public shall 
decide." M. JSTecker, out of pique, published his book ; it had an 
immense sale ; other pamphlets, more violent and less solid, had 
already appeared ; at the same moment a riot, which seemed to 
have been planned and to be under certain guidance, broke out in 
several parts of France. Drunken men shouted about the public 
thoroughfares, " Bread ! cheap bread ! " 

Serious damage was done throughout France to property, and 
even to provisions; barns were burnt, farm-houses plundered, 
wheat thrown in to the river, and sacks of flour ripped to pieces 
before the king's eyes at Versailles. At last the troubles began to 
subside, and the merchants recovered their spirits ; M. Turgot had 



' Disttirbances. 537 

at once sent fifty thousand francs to a trader whom the rioters had 
robbed of a boat full of wheat which they had flung into the river ;" 
two of the insurgents were at the same time hanged at Paris on a 
gallows forty feet high, and a notice was sent to the parish-priests, 
which they were to read from the pulpit in order to enlighten tho 
people as to the folly of such outbreaks, and as to the conditions of 
the trade in grain : " My people, when they know the authors of 
the trouble, will regard them with horror," said the royal circular. Measures 
The authors of the trouble have remained unknown; to his 1^^^ put them 
day, M. Turgot believed in the existence of a plot concocted by down. 
the prince of Conti, with the design of overthrowing him. 

Severities were hateful to the king ; he had misjudged his own 
character, when, at the outset of his reign, he had desired the 
appellation of Louis le Severe. " Have we nothing to reproach 
ourselves with in these measures 1 " he was incessantly asking 
M. Turgot, who was as conscientious, but more resolute, than his 
master. An amnesty preceded the coronation, which was to take 
place at Eheims on the 11th of June, 1775. 

A grave question presented itself as regarded the king's oath : 
should he swear, as the majority of his predecessors had sworn, to 
exterminate heretics ? M. Turgot had aroused Louis XVI. 's scruples 
upon this subject: "Tolerance ought to appear expedient in point' 
of policy for even an intidel prince/' he said ; " but it ought to be 
regarded as a sacred duty for a religious prince." The clergy, 
scared by the minister's liberal tendencies, reiterated their appeals 
to the king against the liberties tacitly accorded to Protestants. 
" Finish," they said to Louis XVI., " the work which Louis the 
Great began, and which Louis the Well-beloved continued." The 
king answered with vague assurances ; already MM. Turgot and 
de Malesherbes were entertaining him with a project which 
conceded to Protestants the civil status. 

M. de Malesherbes, indeed, had been for some months past m. de Ma- 
seconding his friend in the weighty task which the latter had lesherbes 
undertaken. Called to the ministry in the place of the duke of (.[ai re- 
La Vrilliere, his first care was to protest against the sealed letters forma. 
{lettres de cachet— summary arrest), the application whereof he 
was for putting in the hands of a special tribunal ; he visited the 
Bastille, releasing the prisoners confined on simple suspicion. He 
had already dared to advise the king to a convocation of the states- 
general. 

Almost the whole ministry was in the hands of reformers ; a 
sincere desire to do good impelled the king tovrards those who 
promised him the happiness of his people. The count de St, 



538 



History of France. 



M de 
Saint ter- 
main and 
military- 
reforms. 



Suppres- 
sion of the 
"jurandes" 
and "mai- 
trises." 



Germain, who succeeded M. de May at the war-office, had conceived 
a thousand projects of reform; he wanted to apply them all at 
once. He made no sort of case of the picked corps, and suppressed 
the majority of them, thus irritating, likewise, all the privileged. 
" M. de St. Germain," wrote Frederick II. to Yoltaire, " had great 
and nohle plans very advantageous for your Welches ; hut every- 
body thwarted him, because the reforms he proposed would have 
entailed a strictness which was repugnant to them on ten thousand 
sluggards, well frogged, well laced." The enthusiasm which had 
been excited by the new minister of war had disappeared from 
amongst the officers ; he lost the hearts of the soldiers by wanting 
to establish in the army the corporal punishments in use amongst 
the German armies in which he had served. The feeling was so 
strong, that the attempt was abandoned. " In the matter of 
sabres," said a grenadier, " I like only the edge." Violent and 
weak both together, in spite of his real merit and his genuine worth, 
often giving up wise resolutions out of sheer embarrassment, he 
nearly always failed in what he undertook ; the outcries against the 
reformers were increased thereby; the faults of M. de St. Germain 
were put down to M. Turgot. 

The task which that energetic and well-meaning statesman had 
undertaken was above his strength. Ever occupied with the public 
weal, he turned his mind to every subject, issuing a multiplicity of 
decrees, sometimes with rather chimerical hopes. He had proposed 
to the king six edicts ; two were extremely important ; the first 
abolished jurorships {jurandes) and masterships [maitrises) among 
the workmen : " The king," said the preamble, " wishes to secure 
to all his subjects and especially to the Immblest, to those who 
have no property but their labour and their industry, the full and 
entire enjoyment of their rights, and to reform, consequently, the 
institutions which strike at those rights, and which, in spite of 
their antiquity, have failed to be legalized by time, opinion and 
even the acts of authority." The second substituted for forced 
labour on roads and highways an impost to which all proprietors 
were equally liable. 

This was the first step towards equal redistribution of taxes ; 
great was the explosion of disquietude and wrath on the part of the 
privileged ; it showed itself first in the council, by the mouth of 
M. de Miromesnil ; Turgot sprang up with animation. *' The 
keeper of the seals," he said, " seems to adopt the principle that, 
by the constitution of the State, the noblesse ought to be exempt 
from all taxation. This idea will appear a paradox to the majority 
of the nation. The commoners {roturiers) are certainly the 



Fall of Turgot ajtd Malesherbes. 539 

greatest number, and we are no longer in the days when their voices 
did not count." The king listened to the discussion in silence. 
** Come," he exclaimed abruptly, " I see that there are only 
M. Turgot and I here who love the people," and he signed 
the edicts. 

The comptroller-general was triumphant ; but bis victory was pall of M. 
but the prelude to his fall. Too many enemies were leagued Turgot. 
against him, irritated both by the noblest qualities of his character, 
and at the same time by the natural defects of his manners. 
Possessed of love "for a beautiful ideal, of a rage for perfection," 
M. Turgot had wanted to attempt everything, undertake every- 
thing, reform everything at one blow. He fought single-handed. 
M. de Malesherbes, firm as a rock at the head of the Court of Aids, 
supported as he was by the traditions and corporate feeling of the 
magistracy, had shown weakness as a minister. The two friends 
fell together. M. Turgot had espied the danger and sounded some 
of the chasms just yawning beneath the feet of the nation as well 
as of the king ; he committed the noble error of believing in the 
instant and supreme influence of justice and reason. " Sir," said 
be to Louis XVI., " you ought to govern, like God, by general 
laws." Had he been longer in power, M. Turgot would still have 
failed in his designs. The life of one man was too short, and the 
hand of one man too weak, to modify the course of events, fruit 
slowly ripened during so many centuries. It was to the honour of 
M. Turgot that he discerned the mischief and would fain have 
applied the proper remedy. He was often mistaken about the 
means, oftener still about the strength he had at disposal. He had 
the good fortune to die early, still sad and anxious about the fate 
of his country, without having been a witness of the catastrophes 
he had foreseen and of the sufferings as well as wreckage through, 
which. France must pass before touching at the haven he would 
fain have opened to her. 

The joy of the courtiers was great, at Versailles, when the news Joy of the 
arrived of M. Turgot's fall ; the public regretted it but little : the courtiers, 
inflexible severity of his principles, which he never veiled by grace 
of manners, a certain disquietude occasioned by the chimerical 
views which were attributed to him, had alienated many people 
from him. His real friends were in consternation. 

A few months later M. de St. Germain retired in his turn, not to 
Alsace again, but to the Arsenal with forty thousand livres for 
pension. The first, the great attempt at reform had failed ; a vain 
attempt had been made to establish th.e government on the soundest 
as well as the most moderate principles of pure philosophy; at 



540 .' ' History of 'France. ' 

home a new attempt, bolder and at the same time more practicaly » 

was soon about to resviscitatefor a while the hopes of liberal minds; 

abroad and in a new woiid there was already a commencement of 

events which were aboat to bring to France a revival of glory and 

to shed on the reign of Louis XVI. a moment's legitimate and 

brilliant lustre. 

Foreig-a 'X'jj^e Seven Tears' War was ended, shamefully and sadly for 

poiitics. 5 J J 

TheAmeri- France; M. de Choiseul, who had concluded peace with regret and 

ean War. a bitter pang, was ardtntly pursuing every means of taking his 
revenge. To foment disturbances between England and her, 
colonies appeared to him an efficacious and a natural way of grati- 
fying his feelings. " There is great difficulty in governing States 
in the days in which we live," he wrote to M. Durand, at that 
time French minister in London; "still greater difficulty in 
governing those of America; and the difficulty approaches impos-- 
sibility as regards those of Asia. I am very much astonished that 
England, which is but a very small spot in Europe, should hold 
dominion over more than a third of America, and that her dominion 
should have no other object but that of trade. ... As long as the 
vast American possessions contribute no subsidies for the support 
of the mother-country, private persons in England will still grow 
rich for some time on the trade with America, but the State will be 
undone for want of means to keep together a too extended poAver ; 
if, on the contrary, England proposes to establish imposts in her 
M de Choi- American domains, when they are more extensive and perhaps more 
seul wishes populous than the mother-country, when they have fishing, woods, 
the Ameri- i^^-vigation, corn, iron, they will easily part asunder from her, 
cans. without any fear of chastisement, for England could not undertake 

a war against them to chastise them." He encouraged his agents 
to keep him informed as to the state of feeling in America, wel- 
coming and studying all projects, even the most fantastic, that 
might be hostile to England. : 

When M. de Choiseul Was thus writing to M. Durand, the 
English government had already justified the fears of its wisest and 
most sagacious friends. The disruption of the American colonies, 
and the declaration of independence created in Europe, as may well, 
be supposed, the greatest excitement. Statesmen followed with- 
increasing interest the vicissitudes of a struggle which at a distance,- 
had Irom the first appeared to the most experienced an unequal 
one. *' Let us not anticipate events, but content ourselves with 
learning them when they occur," said a letter, in 1776, to M. de 
Guines, ambassador in London, from Louis XVI. 's minister for 
foreign affairs, M. de Vergennes : " I prefer to follow, as a quiet 



Division in the French cabinet. '541 

•observer, the course of events rather than try to produce them..** 

He had but lately said with prophetic anxiety : " Far from seeking 

to profit by the embarrassment in which England finds herself on 

account of affairs in America, we should rather desire to extricate 

her. The spirit of revolt, in whatever spot it breaks out, is 

■ always of dangerous precedent ; it is with moral as with physical 

diseases, both may become contagious. This consideration shtmld 

induce us to take care that the spirit of independence, which is 

causing so terrible an explosion in l^rorth America, have no 

power to communicate itself to points interesting to us in this 

hemisphere." 

Independence was not yet proclaimed, and already the committee The 

charged by Congress " to correspond with friends in England, Ire- g.^loiis^'to 

land, and other parts of the world," had made inquiry of the French secure tlia 

covernment, bv roundabout ways, as to what were its intentions ^^IP 0^ 
^ " . ... . France, 

regarding the American colonies, and was soliciting the aid of 

France. On the 3rd of March, 1776, an agent of the committee, 

Mr. Silas Deane, started for France ; he had orders to put the same 

question point blank at Versailles and at Paris. 

The ministry was divided on the subject of American affairs; 
M. Turgot inclined towards neutrality. " Let us leave the insur- 
gents," he said, " at full liberty to make their purchases in our ports 
and to provide themselves by the way of trade with the munitions, 
and even the money, of which they have need. A refusal to sell 
to them would be a departure from neutrality. But it would be a 
departure likewise to furnish them with secret aid in money, and 
this step, which it would be difficult to conceal, would excite just 
complaints on the part of the English." 

This was, however, the conduct adopted on the advice of M. de 
Vergennes ; he had been powerfully supported by the arguments 
presented in a memorandum drawn up by M. de Rayneval, senior 
clerk in the foreign office ; he was himself urged and incited by the 
most intelligent, the most restless and the most passionate amongst Secret 
the partisans of the American rebellion — Beaumarchais. The transac- 
versatile author of " Le marlage de Figaro " had for a long while ^^^ French 
been pleading the cause of the colonies, sure, he said, of its ultimate foreign 
triumph. On the 10th of January, 1776, three weeks before the °™°®- 
declaration of independence, M de Yergennes secretly remitted a 
million to M. de Beaumarchais ; two months later the same sum 
was entrusted to him in the name of the king of Spain. Beau- 
marchais alone was to appear in the affair and to supply the insur- 
gent Americans with arms and ammunition. "You will found," he 
had been told, " a great commercial house, and you wUl try to 



542 



History of France. 



M. de Ver- 
gennes 
and Beau- 
marcha^s. 



La Fayette 
in America. 



Washing- 
ton's leel- 
ings to- 
wards 
France. 



draw into it the money of private individuals ; the first outlay be- 
ing now provided, we shall have no further hand in it, the affair 
would compromise the government too much in the eyes of the 
English." It was under the style and title of Rodrigo Hortalez 
and Go. that the first instalment of supplies, to the extent of more 
than three millions, was forwarded to the Americans ; and, not- 
withstanding the hesitation of the ministry and the rage of the 
English, other instalments soon followed, Beaumarchais was 
henceforth personally interested in the enterprise; he had com- 
menced it from zeal for the American cause and from that yearning 
for activity and initiative which characterized him even in old age. 
*' I should never have succeeded in fulfilling my mission here with- 
out the indefatigable, intelligent and generous efforts of M. de 
Beaumarchais," wrote Silas Deane to the secret committee of Con- 
gress : " the United States are more indebted to him, on every 
account, than to any other person on this side of the Ocean." 

The hereditary sentiments of Louis XVI. and his monarchical 
principles, as well as the prudent moderation of M. Turgot, retarded 
at Paris the negotiations which caused so much ill-humour among 
the English, and which Silas Deane and Franklin were endeavour- 
ing to bring to a satisfactory issue ; M. de Vergennes still preserved, 
in all diplomatic relations, an apparent neutrality. " It is viy line 
(metier), you see, to be a royalist," the Emperor Joseph II. had 
said during a visit he had just paid to Paris, when he was pressed 
to declare in favour of the American insurgents ; at the bottom of 
his heart the king of France was of the same opinion ; he had 
refused the permission to serve in America which he had been 
asked for by many gentlemen : some had set off without waiting for 
it ; the most important as well as the most illustrious of them all, 
the marquis of La Fayette, was not twenty years old when he slipped 
away from Paris, leaving behind his young wife close to her con- 
finement, to go and embark upon a vessel which he had boiight, 
and which, laden with arms, awaited him in a Spanish port ; 
arrested by order of the court, he evaded the vigilance of his guards ; 
in the month of July, 1777, he disembarked in America. 

Washington did not like France, he did not share the hopes 
which some of his fellow-countrymen founded upon her aid ; he 
made no case of the young volunteers who came to enrol themselves 
amongst the defenders of independence and whom Congress loaded 
with favours. " No bond but interest attaches these men to 
America," he would say, " and, as for France, she only lets us get 
our munitions from her because of the benefit her commerce derives 
from it." Prudent, reserved, and proud, "Washington looked for 



Declaration of war. 543 

America's salvation to only America herself \ neither had he fore- 
seen, nor did he understand that enthusiasm, as generous as it ia 
unreflecting, which easily takes possession of the French nation, autl 
of which the United States were just then the object. M. de La 
Fayette was the first who managed to win the general's affection Washing- 
and esteem. A great yearning for excitement and renown, a great ^^^ ^"^^ ^^ 
zeal for new ideas and a certain political perspicacity had impelled 
M. de La Fayette to America ; he showed himself courageous, 
devoted, more judicious and more able than had been expected 
from his youth and character. Washington came to love him as 
a son. The great and strong common-sense of the American general 
had enlightened him as to the conditions of the contest he had 
entered upon. He knew it was a desperate one, he foresaw that it 
would be a long one ; better than anybody he knew the weaknesses 
as well as the merits of the instruments which he had at disposal, 
he had learned to desire the alliance and the aid of France. She 
did not belie his hopes ; at the very moment when Congress was 
refusing to enter into negotiations with Great Britain as long as a 
single English soldier remained on American soil, rejoicings and 
thanksgivings were everywhere throughout the thirteen colonies 
greeting the news of the recognition by France of the Independence 
of the United States ; the treaties of alliance, a triumph of diplo- 
matic ability on the part of Franklin, had been signed at Paris on 
the 6th of February, 1778. 

" Assure the English government of the king's pacific intentions," 
M. de Vergennes had written to the marquis of Noailles, then 
French ambassador in England. George III. replied to these mock- 
ing assurances by recalling his ambassador. 

"Anticipate your enemies," Franklin had said to the ministers of ggorggju^ 
Louis XVI., "act towards them as they did to you in 1755, let recalls his 
your ships put to sea before any declaration of war, it will be time fv^uf pari^^ 
to speak when a French squadron bars the passage of Admiral 
Howe, who has ventured to ascend the Delaware." The king'k, 
natural straightforwardness and timidity were equally opposed to 
this bold project ; he hesitated along while ; when Count d'Estaing 
at last, on the 13th of April, went out of Toulon harbour to sail 
for America with his squadron, it was too late, the English were on 
their guard. 

When the French admiral arrived in America, hostilities had 
commenced between France and England, without declaration of -^^ar de- 
war, by the natural pressure of circumstances and the state of feel- clared. 
ing in the two countries. England fired the first shot on the 17th 
of June, 1778. 



'544 



-.History of France, 



TheFreich From the day when the dnke of Choiseul had been forced to sign 
navy im- the humiliating treaty of 1763, he had never relaxed in his efforts 
^^ ^^ ' to improve the French navy. In the course of ministerial alterna- 
tions, frequently unfortunate for the work in hand, it had neverthe- 
less been continued by his successors. Counts d'Estaing and 
d'Orvilliers nobly maintained the honour of the fleur-de^lys against 
men such as admiral Howe and Lord Keppel ; in England the com- 
mation was great at the news that France and America in arms 
against her had just been joined by Spain. A government essen- 
tially monarchical, faithful to ancient traditions, the Spaniards had 
for a long while resisted the entreaties of M. de Vergennes, who 
availed himself of the stipulations of the Family pad. Charles III. 
felt no sort of sympathy for a nascent republic, he feared the con- 
tagion of the example it showed to the Spanish colonies, he hesi- 
tated to plunge into the expenses of a war. His hereditary hatred 
against England preivailed at last over the dictates of prudence. He 
was promised, moreover, the assistance of France to reconquer 
Gibraltar and Minorca. The king of Spain consented to take part 
in the war, without however recognizing the independence of the 
United States or entering into alliance with them. 

The situation of England was becoming serious, she believed 
herself to be threatened with a terrible invasion. As in the days 
of the Great Armada, " orders were given to all functionaries, civil 
and military, in case of a descent of the enemy, to see to the trans- 
portation into the interior and into a place of safety of all horses, 
cattle and flocks that might happen to be on the coasts." " Sixty- 
six allied ships of the line ploughed the Channel, fifty thousand 
men, mustered in J^ormandy, were preparing to burst upon the 
southern counties. A simple American corsair, Paul Jones, ravaged 
with impunity the coasts of Scotland. The powers of the Korth, 
united with Eussia and Holland, threatened to maintain, with arms in 
hand, the rights of neutrals, ignored by the English admiralty- 
courts. Ireland awaited only the signal to revolt ; religious 
quarrels were distracting Scotland and England ; the authority of 
'Lord I^orth's cabinet was shaken in Parliament as well as 
throughout the country, the passions of the mob held sway in 
London, and amongst the sights that might have been witnessed 
Avas that of this great city given up for nearly a week to the popu- 
lace, without anything that could stay its excesses save its own 
lassitude and its own feeling of shame " [M. Cornelis de Witt, 
Histoire de Washington]. 

, So many and siich imposing preparations were destined to pro- 
duce but little fruit ; everywhere the strength of the belligerents 



The American War. 545 

was being exhausted without substantial result and without honour; 
for more tban four years now America had been keeping up the 
war, and her Southern provinces had been everywhere laid waste 
by the enemy ; in spite of the heroism which was displayed by the 
patriots and of which the women themselves set the example, General 
Lincoln had just been forced to capitulate at Charlestown ; Wash- 
ington, still encamped before ^ew York, saw his army decimated by tio^ ^f 
hunger and cold, deprived of all resources, and reduced to subsist Charles- 
at the expense of the people in the neighbourhood. All eyes '°^'*' 
were turned towards France; the marquis of La Fayette had 
succeeded in obtaining from the king and the French ministry 
the formation of an auxiliary corps ; the troops were already on 
their way under the orders of Count de Eochambeau. 

Misfortune and disappointments are great destroyers of some bar- 
riers, prudent tact can overthrow others ; Washington and the 
American army would but lately have seen with suspicion the 
arrival of foreign auxiliaries ; in 1780, transports of joy greeted the 
news of their approach ; M. de La Fayette, moreover, had been 
careful to simre the American general all painful friction. Count 
de Eochambeau and the French officers were placed under the 
orders of Washington, and the auxiliary corps entirely at his dis- 
posal. The delicate generosity and the disinterestedness of the 
French government had sometimes- had the effect of making it 
neglect the national interests in its relations with the revolted 
colonies ; but it had derived therefrom a spirit of conduct invari- 
ably calculated to triumph over the prejudices, as well as the jealous 
pride of the Americans. 

" The history of the War of Independence is a history of hopes The 
deceived," said Washington. He had conceived the idea of making French ia 
himself master of JSTew York with the aid of the French. The 
transport of the troops had been badly calculated ; Eochambeau 
brought to Ehode Island only the first division of his array, five 
thousand men about, and Count de Guichen, whose squadron had 
been relied upon, had just been recalled to France. Washington 
was condemned to inaction. " Our position is not sufficiently bril- 
liant," he wrote to M. de La Fayette, "to justify our putting pres- 
sure upon Count de Eochambeau ; I shall continue our arrange- 
ments, however, in the hope of more fortunate circumstances." 
The American army was slow in getting organized, obliged as it had 
been to fight incessantly and make head against constantly recur- 
ring difficulties ; it was getting organized, however; the example 
of the French, the discipline which prevailed in the auxiliary corp.s, 
the good understanding thenceforth established amongst the 



546 History of France. 

officers, helped Washington in his difficult task. From the first 
the superiority of the general was admitted by the French as well 
as by the Americans ; naturally and by the mere fact of the gifts 
he had received from God, Washington was always and everywhere 
chief of the men placed within his range and under his influence. 

After many and painful efforts, the day of triumph was at last 
dawning upon General Washington and his country. Alternations 
of success and reverse had signalized the commencement of the 
Campaign campaign of 1781. Lord Cornwallis, who commanded the English 
of 1781. armies in the South, was occupying Virginia with a considerable 
force, when Washington, who had managed to conceal his designs 
from Sir Henry Clinton, shut up in Xew York, crossed Phila- 
delphia on the 4th of September and advanced by forced marches 
against the enemy. The latter had been for some time past harassed 
by the little army of M. de La Fayette. The fleet of Admiral de 
Grasse cut off the retreat of the English. Lord Cornwallis threw 
himself into Yorktown ; on the 30th of September the place was 
invested, and on the 17th October it capitulated. 

Whilst the United States were celebrating their victory with 
thanksgivings and public festivities, their allies were triumphing 
at all the different points, simultaneously, at which hostilities had 
been entered upon. Becoming embroiled with Holland, where the 
republican party had prevailed against the stadtholder, who was 
devoted to them, the English had waged war lapon the Dutch 
The Eng. colonies. Admiral Rodney had taken St. Eustache, the centre of 
the Dutch ^^ immense trade; he had pillaged the warehouses and laden his 
vessels with an enormous mass of merchandise ; the convoy which 
was conveying a part of the spoil to England was captured by 
Admiral La Motte-Piquet ; M. de Bouille surprised the English 
garrison remaining at St. Eustache and recovered possession of the 
island, which was restored to the Dutch. They had just main- 
tained gloriously, at Dogger Bank, their old maritime renown : 
•' Officers and men all fovight like lions," said Admiral Zouttman. 
The firing had not commenced until the two fleets were within 
pistol-shot. The ships on both sides were dismasted, scarcely in 
a condition to keep afloat ; the glory and the losses were equal, 
but the English admiral, Hyde Parker, was irritated and disj)leased ; 
George III. went to see him on board his vessel : " I wish your 
Majesty younger seamen and better ships," said the old sailor, and 
he insisted on resigning. This was the only action fought by the 
Dutch duiing the war ; they left to Admiral de Kersaint the job 
of recovering from the English their colonies of Demerara, Esse- 
quibo and Berbice on the coasts of Guiana. A small Franco- 



The French in India. 547 

Spanish army was at the same time besieging Minorca ; the fleet 
was considerable, the English were ill-preparod ; they were soon 
obliged to shut themselves np in Fort St. Philip, and, finally, to 
surrender (February 4th, 1782). 

As early as 1778, even before the maritime war had burst out in Therrench 
Europe, France had lost all that remained of her possessions on 
the Coromandel coast. Pondicherry, scarcely risen from its ruins, 
was besieged by the English, and had capitulated on the 17th of 
October, after a heroic resistance of forty days' open trenches. 
Since that day a Mussulman, Hyder Ali, conqueror of the Car- 
natic, had struggled alone in India against the power of England : 
it was around him that a group had been formed by the old 
soldiers of Bussy, and by the French who ha^ escaped from the 
disaster of Pondicherry. It was with their aid that the able 
robber-chief, the crafty politician, had defended and consolidated 
the empire he had founded against that foreign dominion which 
threatened the independence of his country. He had just suffered 
a series of reverses, and he was on the point of being forced to 
e\^acuate the Carnatic, and take refuge in his kingdom of Mysore 
when he heard, in the month of July, 1782, of the arrival of a 
French fleet commanded by M. de Suffren. Hyder Ali had already Suffren 
been many times disappointed. The preceding year Admiral d'Orves ^ Hydex 
had appeared on the Coromandel coast witli a squadron, the Sultan 
had sent to meet him, urging him to land and attack Madras, left 
defenceless ; the admiral refused to risk a single vessel or land a 
single man, and he returned, without striking a blow, to Ile-de- 
France. Ever indomitable and enterprising, Hyder Ali hoped 
better things of the new comers : he was not deceived. Six 
months, however, had scarcely elapsed when he died, leaving to 
his son Tippoo Sahib affairs embroiled and allies enfeebled. At 
this news the Mahrattas, in revolt against England, hastened to 
make peace, and Tippoo Sahib, who had just seized Tanjore, was 
obliged to abandon his conquest, and go to the protection of Mala- 
bar. Ten thousand men, only, remained in the Carnatic to back 
the little corps of French ; these had resumed the offensive and 
were preparing to make fresh sallies, when it was known at Cal- 
cutta that the preliminaries of peace had been signed at Paris on 
the 9th of February. The English immediately proposed an armis- 
tice. The Surveillante shortly afterwards brought the same news, 
with orders for Suffren to return to France. India was definitively 
given up to the English, who restored to the French Pondicherry, 
Chandernugger, Mahe and Karikal, the last strips remaining of 
that French dominion which had for a while been triumphant 

K N 2 



548 History of France. 

througliotit the Peninsula. The feehleness and the vices of Louis 
XV. 's government weighed heavily upon the governmeut of Louis 
XYI. in India as Avell as in France, and at Paris itself. 

Eeceplion It is to the honour of mankind and their consolition under 
of M. de great reverses that political checks and the inutility of their efforts 

Veroailles. *^^ ^°^ ohscure the glory of great men. M. de Sulfren had jnst 
arrived at Paris, he was in low spirits ; M. de Castries took him 
to Versailles. There was a numerous and hrilliant court. On 
entering the guards' hall, "Gentlemen," said the minister to the 
officers on duty, " this is M. de Sulfren." Everybody rose, and 
the bodyguards, forming an escort for the admiral, accompanied 
him to the king's chamber. His career was over ; the last of the 
great sailors of the ancien rc'f;ime died on the 8th of December, 1788. 
Whilst Hyder Ali and M. de Suffren vvere still disputing India 
with England, that power had just gained in Europe an important 
advantage in the eyes of public opinion as well as in respect of 
lier supremacy at sea ; we allude to the town and fortress of Gib- 
raltar which, after being invested by the Franco-Spanish army for 
a considerable time, was relieved and revictualled by Lord Howe in 
1782. 

Peace was at hand, however : all the belligerents were tired of 
the strife, tbe marquis of Pockinghara. was dead ; his ministry, 
after being broken up, had re-formed with less lustre under the 
leadership of Lord Shelburne ; William Pitt, Lord Chatham's 
second son, at that time twenty-two jears of age, had a seat in 
the cabinet. Already negotiations for a general peace had begun 
at Paris, but Washington, who eagerly desired the end of the war, 
did not yet feel any confidence. On the 5th of December, at the 
opening of Parliament, George III. announced in the speech from 
the throne that he had offered to recognize the independence of 
the American colonies. " In thus admitting their separation from 
the crown of this kingdom, I have sacrificed all my desires to the 
wishes and opinion of my people," said the king. " I humbly 
pray Almighty God that Great Britain may not feel the evils 
which may flow from so important a dismemberment of its empire, 
and that America may be a stranger to the calamities which have 
before now proved to the mother-country that monarchy is in- 
separable from the benefits of constitutional liberty. Religion, 
language, interests, affections may still form a bond of union be- 
tween the two countries, and I will spare no pains or attention to 
promote it." "I was the last man in England to consent to the 
independence of America," said the king to John Adams, who was 
the first to represent the new republic at the Court of St. James's ; 



France after the American zvar. 549 

"I will now te the last in the world to sanction any violation of 
it." Honest and sincere in his concessions as he had been in his 
persistent obstinacy, the king supported his ministers against the 
violent attacks made upon them in Parliament. The prelimi- 
naries of general peace had been signed at Paris on the 20th of 
January, 1783. 

To the exchange of conquests between France and England was j^g results 
added the cession to France of the island of Tobago and of the for France, 
Senegal river with its dependencies. The territory of Pondicherry 
and Karikal received some augmentation. For the first time for 
more than a hundred years the English renounced the humiliating 
conditions so often demanded on the subject of the harbour of 
Dunkerqae. Spain saw herself confirmed in her conquest of the 
Floridas and of the island of Minorca. Holland recovered all her 
possessions, except Negapatara. 

France came out exhausted from the struggle, but relieved in her 
own eyes as well as those of Europe from the humiliation inflicted 
upon her by the disastrous Seven Years' War, and by the treaty of 
1763. She saw triumphant the cause she had upheld, and her 
enemies sorrow-stricken at the dismemberment they had suffered. 
It was a triumph for her arms and for the generous impulse which 
had prompted her to support a legitimate but for a long while 
doubtful enterprise. A fresh element, however, had come to add 
itself to the germs of disturbance, already so fruitful, which were 
hatching within her. She had promoted the foundation of a 
Republic based upon principles of absolute right, the government 
had given way to the ardent sympathy of the nation for a people 
emancipated from a long yoke by its deliberate will and its indo- I'Onging 
mitable energy. France felt her heart still palpitating from the freedom, 
eff'orts she had witnessed and shared on behalf of American free- 
dom ; the unreflecting hopes of a blind emulation were already 
agitating many a mind. " In all states," said Washington, " there 
are inflammable materials which a single spark may kindle." In 
1783, on the morrow of the American war, the iu flammable mate- 
rials everywhere accumulated in France were already providing 
means for that immense conflagration in the midst of which the 
country well-nigh perished. 

After a few inefficient and useles§ ministers, Necker had been 
called to the important post so ably filled by Turgot. Public 
opinion was favourable to him, his promotion was well received ; 
it presented, however, great difficulties : he had been a banker, 
and hitherto the comptrollers-general had all belonged to the 
class of magistrates or superintendents; he was a Protestant, 



550 History of France. 

and, as such, could not hold any office. The clergy were in com- 
motion ; they tried certain remonstrances. " We will give him up 
to you," said M. de Maurepas, "if you undertake to pay the debts 
of the State." The opposition of the Church, however, closed to 
the new minister an important opening ; at first director of the 
treasury, then director-general of finance, M. Necker never received 
the title of comptrolier-geneval, and was not admitted to the 
council. From the outset, with a disinterestedness not devoid of 
ostentation, he had declined the salary attached to his funetioiBS. 
The courtiers looked at one another in astonishment : "It is easy 
to see that he is a foreigner, a republican and a Protestant," people 
said. M. de Maurepas laughed : " M. ISTecker," he declared, " is a 
maker of gold ; he has introduced the philosojjher's stone into the 
kingdom." 
Necker at This was for a while the feeling throughout France. " iSTo 
of affairs bankruptcies, no new imposts, no loans," M. Turgot had said, and 
had looked to economy alone for the resources necessary to restore 
the finances. Bolder and less scrupulous, M. !Necker, who had no 
idea of having recourse to either bankruptcy or imposts, made 
unreserved use of the system of loans. During the five years that 
his ministry lasted, the successive loans he contracted amounted to 
nearly 500 million livres. There was no security given to insure 
its repayment to the lenders. The mere confidence felt in the 
minister's ability and honesty had caused the money to flow into 
the treasury. 

M. Necker did not stop there : a foreigner by birth, he felt no 
respect for the great tradition of French administration ; practised 
in the handling of funds, he had conceived as to the internal 
His finan- government of the finances tlieories opposed to the old system ; the 
cial plans, superintendents established a while ago by Richelieu had become 
powerlul in the central administration as well as in the provinces, 
and the comptroller-general was in the habit of accounting with 
them ; they nearly all belonged to old and notable families ; some 
of them had won the public regard and esteem. The new 
minister suppressed several offices and diminished the importance 
of some others ; the treasurers-general, numbering forty-eight, were 
reduced to a dozen, and the twenty-seven treasurers of the navy and 
of war to two ; the farmings-general (of taxes) were renewed with an 
advantage to the treasury of fifteen millions. The posts at court 
likewise underwent reform : the courtiers saw at one blow the 
improper sources of their revenues in the financial administration 
cut ojff, and obsolete and ridiculous appointments, to which 
numerous pensions were attached, reduced. Their discontent was 




NECKER AT SAINT OUEN. 



M. Necker and the " Compte Rendti.'* 551 

becoming every day more noisy, without ns yet shaking the credit 
of M. I^eclver, He thought the moment had come for giving 
public opinion the summons of which he recognized the necessity ; 
he felt himself shaken at court, Avcakened in the regard of M. de 
Maurepas, who was still powerful in spito of his great age and 
jealous of him as he had been of M. Tuigot ; he had made up his 
mind, he said, to let the nation know how its affairs had been ■*■ 5.- '^'^^^^ 
managed, and in the early days of the year 1781 he published his «(Compt3 
Compte rendu au vol. Eeadu." 

It was a bold innovation ; hitherto the administration of the 
finances had been carefully concealed from the eyes of the public 
as the greatest secret in the affairs of State ; for the first time the 
nation was called upon to take cognizance of the jiosition of the 
public estate and, consequently, pass judgment upon its adminis- 
tration. The very reforms brought about by the minister rendered 
his fall more imminent every day. He had driven into coalition His down- 
against him the powerful influences of the courtiers, of tlie old ^*^^- ^^" 

T}l^C6u bV 

families whose hereditary destination was office in the administra- -^ ^^ ca- 
tion, and of the Parliament everywhere irritated and anxious. He lonne. 
had lessened the fortunes and position of the two former classes, 
and his measures tended to strip the magistracy of the authority 
whereof they were so jealous ; obliged finally to send in his 
resignation (1781), he was replaced by M. de Calonne. 

It was court-influence that carried the day and, in the court, that 
of the queen, prompted by her favourite, Madame de Polignac. 
Tenderly attached to his wife, who had at last given him a son, 
Louis XVI., delivered from the predominant influence of M. de 
Ma,urepas, was yielding, almost unconsciously, to a new power. 
Marie Antoinette, who had long held aloof from politics, henceforth ^^® qiieen 

^(f AT i ft 

changed her part ; at the instigation of the friends whom she Antoinette, 
honoured with a perhaps excessive intimacy, she began to take au 
important share in affairs, a share which was often exaggerated by 
public opinion, more and more hard upon her every day. 

Received on her arrival in France with some mistrust, of which 
she had managed to get the better amongst the public, having been 
loved and admired as long as she was dauphiness, the young queen, 
after her long joeriod of constraint in the royal family, had soon 
profited by her freedom ; she had a horror of etiquette, to which 
the coui-t of Austria had not made her accustomed, she gladly 
escaped from the grand palaces of Louis XIV., where the tradiiions 
of his reign seemed still to exercise a secret influence, in order to 
seek at her little manor-house of Trianon new amusements and 
rustic pleasures, innocent and simple, and attended with no other 



552 History of France. 

inconvenience but tte air of cliqnedom and almost of mystery in 

which the queen's guests enveloped themselves. 

The royal In the home-circle of the royal family, the queen had not found 

family of any intimate friend : the kingf's aunts had never taken to her ; the 
France . 

crafty ability of the count of Provence and the giddiness of the count 

of Artois seemed in the prudent eye of Maria Theresa to be equally 
dangerous ; Madame Elizabeth, the heroic and pious companion of 
the evil days, was still a mere child ; already the duke of Chartres, 
irreligious and debauched, displayed towards the queen who kept 
him at a distance symptoms of a bitter rancour which was destined 
to bear fruit ; Marie Antoinette, accustomed to a numerous family, 
affectionately united, sought friends who could " love her for 
herself," as she used to say. An illusive hope, in one of her rank, 
for which she was destined to pay dearly. She formed an attach- 
ment to the young princess of Lamballe, daughter-in-law of the 
duke of Penthievre, a widow at twenty years of age, affectionate 
and gentle, for whom she revived the post of lady-superintendent, 
abolished by Mary Leczinska. The court was in commotion, and 
the public murmured j the queen paid no heed, absorbed as she was 
in the new delights of friendship ; the intimacy, in which there 
was scarcely any inequality, with the princess of Lamballe, was 
soon followed by a more perilous affection; the countess Jules de 
Polignac, who was generally detained in the country by the narrow- 
ness of her means, appeared at court on the occasion of a festival ; 
the queen was pleased with her, made her remain and loaded 
her and her family, not only with favours but with unbounded 
and excessive familiarity, Finding the court-circles a constraint 
and an annoyance, Marie Antoinette became accustomed to seek in 
Madame de ^^® drawing-room of Madame de Polignac amusements and a 
Polignac. freedom which led before long to sinister gossip. Those who were 
admitted to this royal intimacy were not always prudent or 
discreet, they abused the confidence as well as the generous kind- 
ness of the queen ; their ambition and their cupidity were equally 
concerned in urging Marie Antoinette to lake in the government a 
part for which she was not naturally inclined. M. de Calonne was 
intimate with Madame de Polignac ; she, created a duchess and 
appointed governess to the children of Prance (the royal children), 
was all-powerful with her friend the queen ; she dwelt upon the 
talents of M. de Calonne, the extent and fertility of his resources ; 
M. de Vergennes was won over, and the office of comptroller- 
general, which had but lately been still discharged with lustre by 
M. Turgot and M. iSTecker, fell on the 30th of October, 1784, into 
the hands of M. de Calonne. 



M. de Caionne. 553 

Discredited from the very first by a dishonourable action, he had 
invariably managed to get his vices forgotten, thanks to the charms 
of a brilliant and fertile wit. Prodigal and irregular as superin- 
tendent of Lille, he imported into the comptroller-generalship 
habits and ideas opposed to all the principles of Louis XYL 
" The reputation of M. de Caionne," says M. Necker in his 
memoires, " was a contrast to the morality of Louis XVI., and I r" , 
know not by what argumentation, by what ascendancy such a financial 
prince was induced to give a place in his council to a magistrate '^ics. 
who was certainly found agreeable in the most elegant society of 
Paris but whose levity and principles were dreaded by the whole 
of France. Money was lavished, largesses were multiplied, there 
was no declining to be goodnatured or complaisant, economy was 
made the object of ridicule, it was daringly asserted that immensity 
of expenditure, animating circulation, was the true principle of 
credit." 

If the first steps of M. de Caionne dismayed men of foresight 
and of experience in affairs, the public was charmed with them, no 
less than the courtiers. The hail des fermes was re-established, the 
Caisse cCescompte had resumed payment, the stock -holders [rentiers) 
received their quarters' arrears, the loan whereby the comptroller- 
general met aU expenses had reached 11 per cent. "A man who 
wants to borrow," M. de Caionne would say, " must appear rich, 
and to appear rich he must dazzle by his expenditure. Act we 
thus in the public administration. Economy is good for nothing, 
it warns those who have money not to lend it to an indebted 
Treasury, and it causes decay amongst the arts which prodigality 
vivifies." 

The captivation was general, the blindness seemed to be so Excite- 
likewise ; a feverish impulse carried people away into all new- j-pance 
fangled ways, serious or frivolous. Mesmer brought from Germany 
his mysterious revelations in respect of problems as yet unsolved 
by science, and pretended to cure all diseases around the magnetic 
battery ; the adventurer Cagliostro, embellished with the title of 
count and lavishing gold by handfuls, bewitched court and city. 
At the same time splendid works in the most diverse directions 
maintained at the topmost place in the world that scientific genius 
of France which the great minds of the seventeenth century had 
revealed to Europe. The ladies of fashion crowded to the brilliant 
lectures of Fourcroy. The princes of pure science, M. de Lagrange, science. 
M. de Laplace, M. Monge, did not disdain to wrench themselves 
from their learned calculations in order to second the useful labours 
of Lavoisier, Bold voyagers were scouring the world, pioneers of 



554 History of France. 

those enterprises of discovery which had appeared for a while 
abandoned during the seventeenth century. M, de Bougainville 
had just completed the round of the world, and the English 
captain, Cook, during the war which covered all seas with hostile 
ships, had been protected by generous sympathy. The name of 
another distinguished sailor, M. de La Peyrouse, mast not be 
forgotten ; nor should we leave unnoticed the first attempts in 
aerial locomotion made by MM. de Montgolfier and Pilatre de 
Kozier. 

So many scientific explorations, so many new discoveries of 
nature's secrets were seconded and celebrated by an analogous 
movement in literature. Eousseau had led the way to impassioned 
admiration of the beauties of nature ; Bernardin de St. Pierre had 
just published his Etudes de la Nature ; he had in the press his 
Paul et Virginie ; the Abbe Delille Avas reading his Jardin, and M. 

• de St. Lambert his Satsons. In their different phases and according 
to their special instincts, all minds, scholarly or political, literary oi 
philosophical, were tending to the same end and pursuing the same- 
attempt. It was nature which men wanted to discover or recover; 
scientific laws and natural rights divided men's souls between 
them. Buffon was still alive, and the great sailors were every day 
enriching with their discoveries the Jardin du Eoi ; the physicists 
and the chemists, in the wake of Lavoisier, were giving to science 
a language intelligible to common folks ; the juvis-consults were 
attempting to reform the rigours of criminal legislation at the same 
time with the abuses they had entailed, and Beaumarchais was 
bringing on the boards his Manage de Figaro. 

Figaro ridiculed everything with a dangerously pungent vigour ; 
the days were coming when the pleasantry was to change into 
insults. Already public opinion was becoming hostile to the 
queen : she was accused of having remained devoted to the interests 
of her German family ; the people were beginning to call her the 
Austrian. This direful malevolence on the part of public opinion, 

• springing from a few acts of imprudence, and fomented by a long 
series of calumnies, burst forth on the occasion of a scandalous and 
grievous occurrence ; we mean the affair of the diamond necklace, 
which led to the arrest of the cardinal de Eohan. 

Guilty in the king's eyes, a dupe according to the judgment of 
history, Cardinal Eohan was exiled to his abbey of Chaise-Dieu, 
less to be pitied than the unhappy queen abruptly wrenched from 
the sweet dreams of a romantic friendship and confidence, as well 
as from the nascent joys of maternal happiness, to find herself 
henceforth confronting a deluded people and an ever- increasing 



The Notables and the Parliammt, 555 

hostility wliich was destined to unjustly persecute her even to tho 
block. 

M. de Calonne had taken little part in the excitement which the Convoca- 
trial of Cai'dinal Eohan caused in court and city : he was absorbed notables, 
by the incessantly recurring difficulties presented by the condition Downfall 
of the Treasury ; speculation had extended to all classes of society ; ca'onne 
loans succeeded loans, everywhere there were formed financial com- 
panies, Avithout any resources to speak of, speculating on credit. 
Parliament began to be alarmed, and enregistered no more credits 
save with repugnance. In view of the stress at the Treasury, of 
growing discontent, of vanished illusions, the comptroller-general 
meditated convoking the Assembly of Notables, the feeble resource 
of the old French kingship before the days of pure monarchy, an 
expedient more insufficient and more dangerous than the most far- 
seeing divined after the lessons of the philosophers and the con- 
tinuous abasement of the kingly Majesty. 

The convocation of the Notables brought about the views of the 
minister, who had staked his popularity upon it (1787) ; he was suc- 
ceeded by Lomenie de Brienne, a minister who " had nothing but ^ *. 

•^ ' . ° Brienne. 

bad moves to make," says M. Mignet. Three edicts touching the Agitauon 

trade in grain, forced labour and the provincial assemblies were i? *^® 
. . Parlia- 

first sent up to the Parliament and enregistered without any dif- meat. 

ficulty ; the two edicts touching the stamp-tax and equal assess- 
ment of the impost were to meet with more hindrance ; the latter 
at any rate united the sympathies of all the partisans of genuine re- 
forms ; the edict touching the stamp-tax was by itself and first sub- 
mitted for the approval of the magistrates : they rejected it, asking, 
like the notables, for a communication as to the state of finance. 
" It is not states of finance we want," exclaimed a councillor, Saba- 
tier de Cabre, " it is States-general." This bold sally became a 
theme for deliberation in the Parliament. " The nation represented 
by the States-general," the court declared, " is alone entitled to 
grant the king subsidies of which the need is clearly demonstrated." 
At the same time the Parliament demanded the impeachment of 
M. de Calonne ; he took fright and sought refuge in England. 
The mob rose in Paris, imputing to the court the prodigalities with 
which tho Parliament reproached the late comptroller-general. 
Sad symptom of the fatal progress of public opinion ! The cries 
heretofore raised against the queen under the name of Austrian 
were now uttered against Madame Deficit, pending the time when 
the fearful title of Madame Veto would give place in its turn to the 
sad name of the woman Ca2)et given to the victim of October IG, 
1793. 



556 



History of France. 



Bed of 
justice. 

The par- 
liament 
sent to 
Troyes. 



Provincial 
assem- 
blies. 



The king summoned the Parliament to Versailles, and on the 6th 
of August, 1 787, the edicts touching the stamp-tax and territorial 
subvention were enregistered in bed of justice. The Parliament 
had protested in advance against this act of royal authority, which 
it called " a phantom of deliberation." On the 13th of August, the 
court declared " the registration of the edicts null and without 
effect, incompetent to authorize the collection of imposts opposed to 
all principles ; " this resolution was sent to all the seneschalties and 
bailiwicks in the district. It was in the name of the privilege of 
the two upper orders that the Parliament of Paris contested the royal 
edicts and made appeal to the supreme jurisdiction of the States- 
general ; the people did not see it, they took out the horses of 
M. d'Esprimesnil, whose fiery eloquence had won over a great 
number of his colleagues, and he was carried in triumph. On the 
15th of August, the Parliament was sent away to Troyes, to be, 
however, recalled a little more than a month later. M. de Brienne 
hoped thus to obtain a loan of 420,000,000, which was to be raised 
in the course of five years. The king held a bed of justice at Ver- 
sailles, and insisted upon the registration of the necessary edicts ; 
notwithstanding the efforts of M. de Malesherbes and the duke of 
Nivernais, the Parliament inscribed on the registers that it was not 
to be understood to take any part in the transcriptioii here ordered 
of gradual and progressive loans for the years 1788, 1789, 1790, 
1791 and 1792. In reply, the duke of Orleans was banished to 
Villers-Cotterets, whilst Councillors Freteau and Sabatier, who had 
made themselves conspicuous by their opposition, were arrested and 
taken to a state-prison. 

The contest extended as it grew hotter ; everywhere the Parlia- 
ments took up the quarrel of the court of Paris ; the formation of 
the provincial aosemblies furnished new centres of opposition ; tht 
petty noblesse made alliance with the magistracy, the antagonism 
of principles became every day more evident ; after the five months 
elapsed since the royal session, the Parliament was still protesting 
against the violence done to it. " I had no need to take or count 
the votes," said the king's reply ; " being present at the deliberation, 
I judged for myself without taking any account of plurality. If 
plurality in my courts were to force my will, the monarchy would 
be nothing but an aristocracy of magistrates." " ]!^o. Sir, no aris- 
tocracy in France, but no despotism either," replied the members of 
parliament. 

The indiscretion of a printer made M. d'Espremesnil acquainted 
with the great designs which were in preparation ; at his instiga- 
tion the Parliament issued a declaration as to the reciprocal rights 



Disturbances, 557 

and duties of the monarch and the nation. " France," said the 
resohition, " is a monarchy hereditary from male to male, governed 
by the king following the laws ; it has for fundamental laws the 
nation's right to freely grant subsidies by means of the States- 
general convoked and composed according to regulation, the customs 
and capitulations of the provinces, the irremoveability of the magis- 
trates, the right of the courts to enregister edicts, and that of each 
citizen to be judged only by his natural judges, without liability 
ever to be arrested arbitrarily." " The magistrates must cease to 
exist before the nation ceases to be free," said a second protest. 

Bold and defiant in its grotesque mixture of the ancient prin- 
ciples of the magistracy with the novel theories of philosophy, the 
resolution of the Parliament was quashed by the king. Orders Arrest of 
were given to arrest M, d'Espremesnil and a young councillor, d'Espre- 
G(nslard de Montsabert, who had played also an active part in the Goislard de 
spirited resistance to the orders of the court, The former was taken Montsa- 
to the island of St. Marguerite, and the latter imprisoned at Pierre ^^ * 
Encise. 

jS"otwithstandiug his promise to convoke the States-general for 
the 1st of May, 1789, M. de Brienne became more and more unpo- 
pular, and disturbances broke out in several points of the kingdom. 
Legal in !N"ormandy, violent in Brittany, tumultuous in Beam, the 
parliamentary protests took a politic and methodical form in Dau- 
phin y. An insurrection amongst the populace of Grenoble, soon Disturb- 
supported by the villagers from the mountains, had at first flown ^jjg 
to arms at the sound of the tocsin. The members of the Parlia- provinces, 
ment, on the point of leaving the city, had been detained by force, 
and their carriages had been smashed. The troops offered little 
resistance ; an exitry was effected into the house of the governor, 
the duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, and, with an axe above his head, 
the insurgents threatened to hang him to the chandelier in his 
drawing-room if he did not convoke the Parliament. Eagged ruf- 
fians ran to the jnagistrates, and compelled them to meet in the 
sessions-hall. The members of parliament succeeded with great 
difficulty in pacifying the mob. As soon as they found themselves 
free, they hastened away into exile. Other hands had taken up 
their quarrel. A certain number of members of the three orders 
met at the town hall, and, on their private authority, convoked for 
the 21st of July the special states of Dauphiny, suppressed a while 
before by Cardinal Richelieu. 

The duke of Clermont-Tonnerre had been superseded by old 
Marshal Vaux, rough and ready. He had at his disposal twenty 
thousand men. Scarcely had he arrived at Grenoble when he wrote 



55 8 History of France. 

to Yersailles, " It is too late," he said. The prerogatives of royal 
authority were maintained, however. The marshal .granted a meet- 
ing of the states-provincial, but he required permission to be asked 
of him. Pie forbade the assembly to be held at Grenoble. It was 
in the castle of Yizille, a former residence of the dauphins, that the 
three orders of Dauphiny met, closely united together in wise and 
patriotic accord. The archbishop of Vienne, Lefranc de Pom- 
The three pig^f^i-,^ brother of the poet, lately the inveterate foe of Voltaire, an 
Dauphiny. ardently and sincerely pious man, led his clergy along the most 
liberal path ; the noblesse of the sword, mingled with the noblesse 
of the robe, voted blindly all the resolutions of the third estate ; 
these were suggested by the real head of the assembly, M. Mounier, 
judge-royal of Grenoble, a friend of M. !Necker's, an enlightened, 
loyal, honourable man, destined ere long to make his name known 
over the whole of France by his courageous resistance to the out- 
bursts of the National Assembly. Unanimously the three orders 
presented to the king their claims to the olden liberties of the pro- 
vince ; they loudly declared, however, that they were prepared for 
all sacrifices and aspired to nothing but the common rights of all 
Trenchmen. The double representation of the third in the estates 
of Dauphiny was A'oted without contest, as well as equal assessment 
of the impost intended to replace forced labour. Throughout the 
whole province the most perfect order had succeeded the first mani- 
festations of popular irritation. 

Meanwhile the Treasury was found to be empty ; all the resources 
were exhausted, disgraceful tricks had despoiled the hospitals and 
the poor ; credit was used up, the payments of the State were back- 
ward ; the discount-bank (catsse d'escompte) was authorized to 
refuse to give coin. To divert the public mind from this painful 
situation, Brienne proposed to the king to yield to the requests of 
the members of Parliament, of the clergy, and of the noblesse 
themselves. A decree of August 8, 1788, announced that the 
States-general would be convoked May 1, 1789 ; the re-establish- 
ment of the plenary court was suspended to that date. Concessions 
wrested from the weakness and irresolution of governments do not 
strengthen their failing powers. Brienne had exhausted his bold- 
ness as well as his basenesses ; he succumbed beneath the outcry of 
public wrath and mistrust. 

On the 25th of August, 1788, the king sent for M. ISTecker. 

M Necker For an instant his return to power had the effect of restoring some 

resumes hope to the most far-sighted. On his coming into office, the 

Treasury was empty, there was no scraping together as much aa 

five thousand livres. The need was pressing, the harvests were 







MARIE ANTOINETTE. 



M. Necker resumes office. 559 

bad; the credit and the aWe resources of the great financier 
sufficed for all ; the funds "vvent up thirty per cent, in one day, 
certain capitalists made advances, the chamber of the notaries of 
Paris paid six millions into the Treasury, M. Necker lent two ^cfilig^ 
millions out of his private fortune. The great financial talents of 
the minister, his probity, his courage had caused illusions as to his 
political talents ; useful in his day and in his degree, the new 
minister Avas no longer equal to the task. The distresses of the 
Treasury had powerfully contributed to bring about, to develope 
the i^olitical crisis ; the public cry for the States-general had arisen 
in a great degree from the deficit ; but henceforth financial 
resources did not safiice to conjure away the danger; the Discount- 
bank had resumed payment, the State honoured its engagements, 
the phantom of bankruptcj' disappeared from before the frightened 
eyes of stockholders ; nevertheless the agitation did not subside, 
minds were full of higher and more tenacious concernments. 
Every gaze was turned towards the States-general. Scarcely was 
M. E'ecker in power, when a royal proclamation, sent to the Parlia- 
ment returning to Paris, announced the convocation of the Assembly 
for the month of January, 1789. 

The States-general themselves had become a topic of the most The States* 
lively discussion. Amidst the embarrassment of his Government, summoned, 
and in order to throw a sop to the activity of the Opposition, 
Brienne had declared his doubts and his deficiency of enlighten- 
ment as to the form to be given to the deliberations of that ancient 
assembly, always convoked at the most critical junctures of the 
national history, and abandoned for 175 years past. "The 
researches ordered by the king," said a decree of the Council, 
"have not brought to light any positive information as to the 
number and quality of the electors and those eligible, any more 
than as to the form of the elections ; the king will always try to 
be as close as possilde to the old usages, and, when they are 
unknown, his Majesty will not supply the hiatus till after con- 
sulting the wish of his subjects, in order that the most entire 
confidence may hedge a truly national assembly. Consequently 
the king requests all the municipalities and all the tribunals to 
make researches in their archives ; he likewise invites all scholars 
and well-informed persons, and especially those who are members 
of the Academy of inscriptions and literature, to study the question 
and give their opinion." In the wake of this appeal, a flood of Pamphlets, 
tracts and pamphlets had inundated Paris and the provinces : 
some devoted to the defence of ancient usages ; the most part 
intended to prove that the Constitution of the olden monarchy 



560 History of France. 

of France contained in principle all the political liberties wliicli 
were but asking permission to soar; some finally, bolder and the 
most applauded of all, like that of Count d'Entraigues, Note on 
the States-general, their rights and the manner of convohing them, 
and that of the Abbe Sieyes, What is the third esta.te ? Count 
d'Entraigues' pamphlet began thus : " It was doubtless in order 
to give the most heroic virtues a home worthy of them that heaven 
willed the existence of republics, and, perhaps to punish the 
ambition of men, it permitted great empires, kings and masters 
to arise." Sieyes' pamphlet had already sold to the extent of 
thirty thousand copies; the development of his ideas was an 
audacious commentary upon his modest title. " What is the third 
estate 1 " said that able revolutionist : " JSTothing. What ought it 
to be? Everything?" It was hoisting the flag against the two 
upper orders. 
Agitation Xhe whole of France was fever-stricken. The agitation was 
outFran'ce contradictory and confused, a medley of confidence and fear, joy 
and rage, everywhere violent and contagious. This time again 
Dauphiny showed an example of politic and wise behaviour. 
The preparatory assemblies were tumultuous in many spots : in 
Provence as well as in Brittany they became violent. In his 
Mirabeau. province, Mirabeau was the cause or pretext for the troubles. 
Born at Bignon, near Nemours, on the 9th of March, 1749, well 
known already for his talent as a writer and orator as well as for 
the startling irregularities of his life, he was passionately desirous 
of being elected to the States-general. " I don't think I shall be 
useless there," he wrote to his friend Cerruti. Nowhere, however, 
was his character worse than in Provence : there people had 
witnessed his dissensions with his father as well as with his wife. 
Public contempt, a just punishment for his vices, caused his 
admission into the states-provincial to be unjustly opposed. The 
assembly was composed exclusively of nobles in possession of fiefs, 
of ecclesiastical dignitaries and of a small number of municipal 
officers. It claimed to elect the deputies to the States-general 
according to the ancient usages. Mirabeau's common sense, as 
well as his great and powerful genius, revolted against the absurd 
theories of the privileged ; he overwhelmed them with his terrible 
eloquence, Avhilst adjuring them to renounce their abuseful and 
obsolete rights ; he scared them by his forceful and striking 
hideousness : " Generous friends of peace," said he, addressing the 
two upper orders, " I hereby appeal to your honour ! Nobles of 
Provence, the eyes of Europe are upon you, weigh well your 
answer ! Ye men of God, have a care ; God hears you ! But, if 



Mirabeau and the States- General. 5^' 

you teep silence or if you intrench yourselves in the vague 
utterances of a piqued self-love, allow me to add a word. In all 
ages, in all countries, aristocrats have persecuted the friends of the 
people, and if, by I know not what combination of chances, there 
have arisen one in their own midst, he it is whom they have struck 
above all, thirsting as they were to inspire terror by their choice of 
a victim. Thus perished the last of the Gracchi, by the hand of 
the patricians ; but, wounded t6 the death, he flung dust towards 
heaven, calling to witness the gods of vengeance, and from that 
dust sprang Marius, Marius less great for having exterminated the 
Cimbri than for having struck down at Eome the aristocracy of 
the noblesse." 

Mirabeau was shut out from the states-provincial, and soon Mirabran 
adopted eagerly by the third estate. Elected at Marseilles as well returned 
as at Aix for the States-general, he quieted, in these two cities Marseilles 
successively, riots occasioned by the dearness of bread. The people, and for 
in their enthusiasm, thronged upon him, accepting his will without 
a murmur when he restored to their proper figure provisions 
lowered in price through the terror of the authorities. The petty 
noblesse and the lower provincial clergy had everywhere taken the 
side of the third estate. Mirabeau was triumphant : " I have 
been, am, and shall be to the last," he exclaimed, " the man for 
public liberty, the man for the constitution. Woe to the privileged 
orders, if that means better be the man of the people than the 
man of the nobles, for privileges will come to an end, but the 
people is eternal ! " 

The day of meeting of the States- general was at hand. Almost 
everywhere the elections had been quiet, and the electors less 
numerous than had been anticipated. We know what indifi'erence 
and lassitude may attach to the exercise of rights which would not 
be willingly renounced ; ignorance and inexperience kept away 
from the primary assemblies many working men and peasants ; 
the middle class alone proceeded in mass to the elections. The 
irregular slowness of the preparatory operations had retarded the 
convocations ; for three months, the agitation attendant upon 
successive assemblies kept France in suspense. Paris was still Plunder of 
voting on the 28th of April, 1789, the mob thronged the streets ; Reveilloa's 
all at once the rumour ran that an attack was being made on the ^^^^^ 
house of an ornamental-paper maker in the faubourg St. Antoine, 
named Eeveillon. Starting as a simple journeyman, this man had 
honestly made his fortune ; he was kind to those who worked in 
his shops : he was accused, nevertheless, amongst the populace, of 
having declared that a journeyman could live on fifteen sous a day. 

o o 



562 History of France. 

The day before, threats had been levelled at him ; he had asked 
for protection from the police, thirty men had been sent to him. 
The madmen who were swarming around his house and stores soon 
got the better of so weak a guard, everything was destroyed ; the 
rioters rushed to the archbishop's, there was voting going on 
there ; they expected to find Eeveillon, whom they wanted to 
murder. They were repulsed by the battalions of the French and 
Swiss guards. More than two hundred were killed. Money was 
found in their pockets. The Parliament suspended its prosecutions 
against the ringleaders of so many crimes. The Government, 
impotent and disarmed, as timid in presence of this riot as in 
presence of opposing parties, at last came before the States-general, 
but blown about by the contrary winds of excited passions, 
without any guide and without fixed resolves, without any firm 
and compact nucleus in the midst of a new and unknown Assembly 
without confidence in the troops, who were looked upon, however, 
as a possible and last resort. 

The States-general were presented to the king on the 2nd of 
May, 1789. It seemed as if the two upper orders, by a prophetic 
instinct of their ruin, wanted, for the last time, to make a parade 
of their privileges. Introduced without delay to the king, they 
left, in front of the palace, the deputies of the third estate to wait 
in the rain. The latter were getting angry, and already beginning 
to clamour, when the gates Avere opened to them. In the magnifi- 
cent procession on the 4th, when the three orders accompanied the 
king to the church of St. Louis at Versailles, the laced coats and 
decorations of the nobles, the superb vestments of the prelates 
easily eclipsed the modest cassocks of the country- priests as well 
as the sombre costume imposed by ceremonial upon the deputies of 
the third estate ; the bishop of Nancy, M. de la Fare, maintained 
the traditional distinctions even in the sermon he delivered before 
the king : " Sir," said he, " accept the homage of the clergy, the 
respects of the noblesse and the most humble supplications of the 
third estate." The untimely applause which greeted the bishop's 
words was excited by the picture he drew of the misery in the 
country-places exhausted by the. rapacity of the fiscal agents. At 
this striking solemnity, set off with all the pomp of the past, 
animated with all the hopes of the future, the eyes of the public 
sought out, amidst the sombre mass of deputies of the third 
(estate), those whom their deeds, good or evil, had already made 
celebrated : Malouet, Mounier, Mirabeau, the last greeted with a 
murmur which was for a long while yet to accompany his name. 
"When the summons by name per bailiwick took place," writes 



The King and M. Necker. 563 

an eye-witness, " there "were cheers for certain deputies who 
were known, but at the name of Mirabeau there was a noise of 
a very different sort. He had wanted to speak on two or three 
occasions, but a general murmur had prevented him from making 
himself heard. I could easily see how grieved he was, and I 
observed some tears of vexation standing in his bloodshot eyes " 
\8ouvenirs de Dumont, 47]. 

The opening of the session took place on the 5th of May. The 
royal procession had been saluted by the crowd with repeated and 
organized shouts of '• Harrah ! for the duke of Orleans ! " which had 
disturbed and agitated the queen. " The king," says Marmontel, 
" appeared with simple dignity, without pride, without timidity, 
wearing on his features the impress of the goodness which he had 
in his heart, a little affected by the spectacle and by the feelings 
which the deputies of a faithful nation ought to inspire in its 
king." His speech was short, dignified, affectionate, and without speeches 
political purport. With more of pomp and detail, the minister of the 
confined himself within the same limits. "Aid his Majesty," said ^"f-^^^° 
he, " to establish the prosperity of the kingdom on solid bases, seek 
for them, point them out to your sovereign, and you will find on 
his part the most generous assistance." The mode of action cor- 
responded with this insufficient language. Crushed beneath the 
burthen of past defaults and errors, the government tendered its 
abdication, in advance, into the hands of that mightily bewildered 
Assembly it had just convoked. The king had left the verification 
of powers to the States-general themselves. M. !N^ecker confined 
himself to pointing out the possibility of common action between 
the three orders, recommending the deputies to examine those 
questions discreetly. " The king is anxious about your first 
deliberations," said the minister, throwing away at hap-hazard 
upon leaders as yet unknown the direction of those discussions 
which he with good reason dreaded. 

It was amidst a chaos of passions, wills, and desires, legitimate 
or culpable, patriotic or selfish, that there was, first of all, pro- 
pounded the question of verification of powers. Prompt and 
peremptory on the part of the noblesse, hesitating and cautious on 
the part of the clergy, the opposition of the two upper orders to 
any common action irritated the third estate ; its appeals had ended 
in nothing but conferences broken off, then resumed at the king's 
desire, and evidently and painfully to no purpose. "By an 
inconceivable oversight on the part of M. E"ecker in the local 
apportionment of the building appointed for the Assembly of the tion of 
States-general, there was the throne-room or room of the three powers, 

o o 2 



564 History of France. 

orders, a room for the noblesse, one for the clergy, and none for the 
commons, who remained, quite naturally, established in the states- 
room, the largest, the most ornate, and all fitted up with tribunes 
for the spectators who took possession of the public boxes {loges 
communes) in the room. When it was perceived that this crowd of 
strangers and their plaudits only excited the audacity of the more 
violent speakers, all the consequences of this installation were felt. 
Would anybody believe," continues M. Malouet, " that M. !N^ecker 
Hesitation had an idea of inventing a ground-slip, a falling-in of the cellars 

of the of ii^Q Menus, and of throwing down, during the night, the 
Ministers. . . 

carpentry of the grand room, in order to remove and install the 

three orders separately ? It was to me myself that he spoke of it, 
and I had great difficulty in dissuading him from the notion, by 
pointing out to him all the danger of it." The want of foresight 
and the nervous hesitation of the ministers had placed the third 
estate in a novel and a strong situation. Installed officially in the 
states-room, it seemed to be at once master of the position, waiting 
for the two upper orders to come to it. Mirabeau saw this with 
that rapid insight into effects and consequences which constitutes, 
to a considerable extent, the orator's genius. The third estate had 
taken possession, none could henceforth dispute with it its privi- 
leges, and it was the defence of a right that had been won which 
was to inspire the fiery orator with hh mighty audacity, when on 
the 23rd of June, towards evening, after the miserable affair of the 
Mirateaa i"fyal session, the marquis of Dreux-Breze came back into the 
and M. de room to beg the deputies of the third estate to withdraw. The 
5'^?'^,^' king's order was express, but already certain nobles and a large 
number of ecclesiastics had joined the deputies of the commons ; 
their definitive victory on the 27th of June and the fusion of the 
three orders were foreshadowed ; Mirabeau rose at the entrance of 
the grand-master of the ceremonies : " 60," he shouted, " and tell 
those who send you, that we are here by the will of the people, and 
that we shall not budge save at the point of the bayonet." This 
was the beginning of revolutionary violence. 

On the 12th of June the battle began; the calling over of the 
bailiwicks took place in the States-room. The third estate sat 
alone. At each province, each chief-place, each roll {proces- 
verhal), the secretaries repeated in a loud voice, " Gentlemen of 
the clergy ] !N"one present. Gentlemen of the noblesse 1 Kone 
present." Certain parish-priests alone had the courage to separate 
from their order and submit their powers for verification. AU the 
deputies of the third (estate) at once gave them precedence. The 
day of persecution was not yet come. 



The National Assembly. 565 

Legality still stood, the third estate maintained a proud modera- 
tion, the border was easily passed, a name was sufBcient. 

The title of States-general was oppressive to the new Assembly, What was 

it recalled the distinction between the orders as well as the humble ** ® ,® 

name 01 

posture of the third estate heretofore. " This is the only true the new 
name," exclaimed Abbe Sieyes : " Assembly of acknowledged and a^ssembly t 
verified representatives of the nation." This was a contemptuous 
repudiation of the two upper orders. Mounier replied with another 
definition : " Legitimate Assembly of the majority amongst the 
deputies of the nation, deliberating in the absence of the duly 
invited minority." The subtleties of metaphysics and politics are 
powerless to take the popular fancy. Mirabeau felt it : " Let us 
call ourselves representatives of the people ! " he shouted. For 
this ever fatal name he claimed the kingly sanction : " I hold the 
king's veto so necessary," said the great orator, " that, if he had it 
not, I would rather live at Constantinople than in France. Yes, I 
protest, I know of nothing more terrible than a sovereign aristo- 
cracy of six hundred persons who, having the power to declare 
themselves to-morrow irremnveable and the next day hereditary, 
would end, like the aristocracies of all countries in the world, by 
swooping down upon everything." 

An obscure deputy here suggested during the discussion the 
name of National Assembly, often heretofore employed to designate 
«the States-general; Sieyes took it up, rejecting the subtle and 
carefully prepared definitions : " I am for the amendment of M. 
Legrand," said he, "and I propose the title oi National Assembly.^* 
Four hundred and ninety-one voices against ninety adopted this 
simple and superb title. In contempt of the two upper orders of 
the State, the national assembly was constituted. The decisive 
step was taken towards the French Revolution. 

During the early days, in the heat of a violent discussion. History is 
Barrere had exclaimed, " You are summoned to recommence "^^^^ ^^' 
history." It was an arrogant mistake. For more than eighty years 
modern France has been prosecuting laboriously and in open day 
the work which had been slowly forming within the dark womb of 
olden France. In the almighty hands of eternal God a people's 
history is interrupted and recommenced never. 



APPENDIX. 



A.— SOUEOES OP THE HISTOHY OE EUANCE. 



I.— COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS, MEMOIRS, LAWS, CHARTEES, ETC. 



BiBLTOTHEQUE Hisfcorique de la France, 
contenant le catalogue des ouvrages im- 
primes et manuscrits qui traitent de I'his- 
toire de ce royaume, oa qui y ont rapport ; 
aveo des notes critiques et historiques. 
Par feu Jacques Lelong, pretre de I'Gra- 
toire, bibliothecaire de la maison de Paris. 
Nouvelle edition, revue, corrigee et con- 
siderablement augmentee par M. Fevret 
de Pontette. 5 vols, folio. One of the best 
and 'most usefiil works of its kind. 

Bibliotheque Nationale, catalogue de 
I'histoire de France. 10 vols. 4to. 

Table Chronologique des Diplomes, 
chartes, titres et actes imprimes con- 
cernant I'histoire de France, par MM. de 
Brequigny et Pardessus. 7 vols, folio. 

Diplomata, cliartse, epistolEe, leges, 
aliaque instrumenta ad res gallo-francicas 
spectantia. Prius coUecta a V. V. 0. C. 
de Breqaigny et la Porte du Theil ; nunc 
nova ratione ordinata, plurimumque 
aucta, jiibente ac moderante Academia 
inscriptionem et humaniorum litterarum, 
edidit J.-M. Pardessus. 5 vols, folio. 

Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de 
la France. Commence par les benedictins 
de la congregation de Saint-Maur eb con- 
tinue par I'Academie des inscriptions et 
belles lettres. 22 vols, folio, in progress. 

Collection des Documents In^dits rela- 
tifs a I'histoire de France. Publics sous 
les auspices du ministere de I'instruction 
publique. 177 vols. 4to, in progress. 

Recueil general des Anoiennes Lois 
Pran9aises, depuis I'an 420 jusqu'^ la 
revolution de 1789. Contenant la notice 
des principaux monumens des M^rovin- 
giens, des Carlovingiens et des Capetiens, 
et le texte des ordonnances, ^dits, de- 
clarations, lettres patentes, reglemens, 
arrets du conseil, etc., de la troisieme race, 
qui ne sent pas abrog^s, ou qui peuvent 
servir, soit a I'interpretation, soit k This- 
toire du droit public et prive. Avec notes 



de concordance, table chronologique et 
table g^nerale analytique et alphabetique 
des matieres. Par MM. Jourdan, Decrusy, 
et Isambert. 22 vols. 8vo. 

Collection des M^moires relatifs a This- 
toire de France, depuis la fondation de la 
monarchic fran9aise jusqu'au xiiie siecle. 
Avec une introduction, des supplements, 
des notices et des notes, par M. P. Guizot. 
31 vols. 8vo. This collection is valuable 
because it comprises in a portable and con- 
venient shape a large number of docu- 
ments : but it has been edited in a slovenly 
manner. 

Collection des Chroniques Nationales 
Fran9aises Sorites en langue vulgaire, du 
xiiie au xvie siecle, avec notes et eclaircis- 
sements par J.-A. Buchon. 47 vols. 8vo. 

Collection complete des Memoires rela- 
tifs a I'histoire de France, depuis le regne 
de Philippe-Auguste jusqu'a la paix de 
Paris conclue en 1763. Avec des notices 
sur chaque auteur et des observations sur 
chaque ouvrage, par MM. Petitot et Mon- 
merque. 131 vols. 8vo. 

Nouvelle collection des Memoires pour 
servir a I'histoire de France, depuis le 
xiiie siecle jusqu'a la fin du xviii*. Pre- 
cedes de notices pour caracteriser chaque 
auteur des memoires et son epoque, suivis 
de I'analyse des documents historiques qui 
s'y rapportent, par MM. Michaud et Pou- 
joulat. 32 vols. 8vo. 

Gallia Christiana, in provincias ecclesi- 
asticas distributa. Qua series et historia 
archiepiscoporum, episcoporum et abba- 
tum Franciae vicinarumque ditionnm, ab 
origine Ecclesiarum ad nostra tempora 
deducitur, et probatur ex authenticis in- 
strumentis ad calcem appositis. Opera 
et studio domni Dionysii Sammarthani, 
presbyteri et monachi ordinis Sancti 
Benedicti e congregatione Sancti Mauri. 
Vols. 1 — 16 folio, in progress. Continued 
by the Institute cf France. 



Sources of the History of France. 



567 



Concilia Antiqua Galliae, tres in tomos 
ordine digesta. Cum epistolis Pontifi- 
cum, principum constitutionibus, et aliis 
GallicanfB rei ecclesiasticse monimentis. 
Quorum plurima vel integra, vel magna 
ex parte, nunc primum in luoem exeunt. 
Opera et studio Jacobi Sirmondi, socie- 
tatis Jesu presbyteri. 3 vols, folio. 

Histoire Litteraire de la France, oii Ton 
traite de I'origine et du progies, de la de- 
cadence et du retablissement des sciences 
parini les Gaulois et parmi les Fran9ois ; 
du gout et du genie des uns et des autres 
pour les lettres en chaque si^cle ; de lours 
ancieunes ecoles ; de I'etablissement des 
universites en Prance ; des principaux 
colleges ; des Academies des sciences et 
des belles-lettres ; des meilleures biblio- 
theques anciennes et moderues ; des plus 
celebres imprimeurs ; et de tout ca qui 
a un rapport particulier a la litterature. 
Avec les eloges historiques des Gaulois et 
des Francois qui s'y tsont fait quelque re- 
putation, le catalogue et la chi'onologie de 



leurs ecrits ; des reraavqnes historiques et 
critiques sur les principaux ouvrages ; le 
denombrenient des difFeientes editions ; le 
tout justifie par les citations des auteuis 
originaux. Par des Religieux Benedictins 
de la congregation de Saint-Maur. Vols. 
1 — 27 4to, Continued by the Institute 0/ 
France. 

Historia TJniversitatis Parisiensis, ipsius 
fundationem, nationes, facultates, niagis. 
tratus, decreta, censuras et judicia in 
negotiis fidei, privilegia, coniitia, lega- 
tiones, reformationes ; item antiquissimas 
Gailorum academias, aliarum quoque uni- 
versitatum et religiosorum ordinum, qui 
ex eadem communi matre exierunt, insti- 
tutiones et fundationes, aliaqne id genus ; 
cum instrumentis publicis et authenticis, 
a Carole magiio ad nostro tempoi'a, or- 
dine chronologico complectens. Authore 
Cresare-Egassio BulseOjeloquentias emericu 
professore, antique rectore et scriba ejus- 
dem universitatis. 6 vols, folio. Oucraye 
curieux (Lalanne). 



II.— LIST OP THE PRINCIPAL AUTHOEITIES POR EACH EPOCH. 



1. — The Gauls, and the Origin of the 
French Monarchy. 

Histoire des Gaulois, depuis les temps 
les plus recules jusqu'a I'entiere soumis- 
sion de la Gaule a la domination romaine, 
par Amedee Thierry. 3 vols. 8vo. 

Histoire critique de I'etablissement dela 
monarihie Pran^oise dans les Gaules, par 
M. I'abbe Dubos. 2 vols. 4to. Dubos, says 
Montesquieu, had Tnade a conspiracy 
against the aristocracy. 

Histoire de I'ancien gouvernement de la 
Prance, avec quatorze lettres historiques 
sur les Parlements ou Etats generaux, par 
M. le comte de Boulainvilliers. 3 vols. 8vo. 
Aims at proving the superiority of the no- 
bility to the rest of the cummu7iity. 
, Observations sur Fhistoire de Prance, 
par I'abbe de Mably, nouvelle edition, 
revue par M. Guizot. 3 vols. 8vo. 

Essais sur I'histoire de Prance, pour 
faire suite aux observations de I'abbe de 
Mably, par P. Guizot. Svo. Paris. 

2. — The Merovingia/ns, 

Histoire des institutions Merovingien- 
nes,et du gouvernement des Merovingiens, 
par T. M. Lehuerou. 2 vols. Svo. 

Recits des temps Merovingiens, preced3S 
de considerations sur I'histoire de Prance, 
par Augustin Thierry. 2 vols tivo. Paris. 



Histoire des Francs, par Gregoire de 
Tours. [300—589.] G. 1, 2. S.H.P. 
4 vols. Svo. ^ Le plus precieux monument 
des premiers temps de notre histoire. (La- 
lanne.) 

Chronique de Predegaire. [583 — 641.] 
G. 2. Le seul monument qui nous fasse 
connaitre I'histoire de cette obscure &poque. 
(Lalanne.) 

Continuations anonymes de Predegaire. 
[642—768.] G. 2. 

Vie de Dagobert I. Par un mome da 
Saint Denis. [600—651.] G. 2. 

Vie de saint Leger, eveque d' Autun. 
[Par un moine de Saint-Symphorien 
d' Autun. 616—683.] G. 2. 

Vie de Pepin le Vieux, dit de Landen, 
maire du palais en Austrasie. [622—752.] 
G. 2. 

3. — The Carlovingians. 

Annales des rois Pepin, Charlemagne 
et Louis le Debonnaiie, par Eginhaid. 
[740—829.] G. 3. S.H.P. Svo. Le meil- 
leur ouvrage d'histoire de cette 4poque. (La- 
lanne.) 

' G. — Collection of memoirs published 
by M. Guizot. 

S H.P. — Publications of the Societd de 
I'Histoire de France. 



568 



History of France. 



Vie de Charlemagne, par Eginhard. 
[740—814.] G. vol. 3. 

jjes faits et gestes de Ctaries le Grand, 
roi des Francs et empereur, par un moine 
de Saint- Gall. [771-812.] G. vol. 3. 

De la vie et des actions de Louis le De- 
bonnaire, par Thegan. [813—835.] G. 3. 

Vie de Louis le Debonnaiie, par FAno- 
nyrae dit I'Astronome. [768-840.] G. 3. 

Histoire des dissensions des fils de Louis 
le Debonnaire, par Nithard. [814: — 843.] 
G. 3. 

Faits et gestes de Lonis le Pieux (on le 
Debonnaire), par Ermold le Noir. [780 — 
826.] G. 4. 

Annales de Saint-Bertin. [840—882.] 
G. 4. S.H.P. 8vo. 

Annales de Metz. [883—903.] G. 4. 

Histoire de I'eglise de Eeims, par Fro- 
doard. [290-940.] G. 5. 

Siege de Paris par les Noraiands, poeme 
d'Abbon. [885—896.] G. 6. 

Clu-onique de Frodoard. [877—978.] 
G. 6. 

4. — Tlie Capetians. 

Cbronique de Eaoul Glaber. [900 — 

1044.] G. 6. 

Richer, Histoire de son temps. [888 — 
954.] S.H.F. 8vo. 

Vie du roi Robert, par Helgand. [997 
— 1031 ] G. 6. 

Poeme d'Adalberon, eveque de Laon, 
adresse a Robert, roi des Fran9ais. [1006] 
G. 6. 

Vie de Bouchard [Burekhardt],comte de 
Melun et de Corbeil. [Par Eudes, moine 
de I'abbaye de Saint-Maur des Fosses. 
[950—1058.] G. 6. 

Pragmens [anonymes] de I'histoire des 
Fran(;ais, de I'avenement de Hugues- 
Capet a la mort de Philippe I". [987— 
1110.] G. 6. 

Chronique de Hugues [moine] de Fleury 
[Saint-Benoit sur Loire], 949—1108, 
Chronicon Fieri acense]. G. 7. 

Proces-verbal du sacre de Philippe ler, 
a Eeims, le 23 mai 1059. G. 7.^ 

Histoire du monastere de Vezelai, par 
Hugues de Poitiers. [Livres II. — IV. 
1140—1167.] G. 7. 

Histoire des croisades, par Guibert de 
Nogent. [1090— IIOO.J G. 9. 

Vie de Guibert de Kogent, par lui 
meme. [1053—1190.] G. 9, 10. 

Vie de Saint Bernard, abbe de Clair- 
vaux. Par Guillaume de Saint-Thierri, 
Arnaud de Bonneval et Geoffroi de Clair- 
vaux. 1091—1153. G. 10. 

Vie de Philippe-Auguste, par Eigord. 
[1165—1208.] G. 



Vie de Philippe-Anguste, par Guillanme 
le Breton, et autres. [1165—1223.] G. 11. 

Vie de Louis VIII. par un anonyme. 
[1223—1226.] G. 11. 

Des faits et gestes de Louis VIII., poeme 
historique, par Nicholas de Bray. [1223 
—1226]. 6.11. 

La Philippide, poeme historique, par 
Guillaume le Breton. G. 12. 

Chronique de Guillaume de Nangis. 
[1113—1327]. G. 13. S H.F. 2 vols. 8vo. 

Histoire de I'heresie des Albigeois, et de 
la sainte guerre entreprise contra eus, 
[1203—1218,] par Pien-e de Vaulx-Cemay. 
G. 14. 

Chanson de la croisade centre les Albi- 
geois. [1207—1218.] S.H.P., vol. 1, 8vo. 
D.I. 1207—1219. 4tD.2 

Histoire de la Guerre des Albigeois. 
[1202—1219.] G. 15. 

Chronique de Guillaume dePuy-Lanrens, 
contenant I'histoire de Tespedition contre 
les Albigeois. [1200—1272.] G. 15. 

Des Gestes glorienx des Franf ais. [1202 
— 1311.] Chronique dite de Simon de 
Montfort. G. 15. 

Histoire des croisades, par Gnillaame de 
Tyr. [610—1184.] G. 15—18. 

Chronique d'Emoul et de Bernard le 
Tresorier. [1101—1231.] G. 19. S.H.F. 
8vo. 

Histoire des croisades, par Albert d'Aix. 
(Chronicon Hierosolymitanum.) [1095 — 
1120.] G. 20, 21. 

L'Ystoire de li Normant, laquelle com- 
pila nn moine de mont de Cassin, et la 
manda a lo abbe Desidere de mont de 
Cassym. [ —1078 ] S.H.F. 8vo. 

Chronique de Eobert Viseart et de ses 
freres. [ —1282.] S.H.F. S H.F. 8vo. 

Histoire des dues de Normandie et des 

rois d'Angleterre. [ .-—1220.] S.H.F. 

8yo. 

Histoire des Francs qui ont pris Jerusa- 
lem, par Raimond d'Agiles, cbapelain du 
eomte Eaimond de Toulouse. [1096 — 
1100.] G. 21. 

Histoire des croisades [historia Hieroso- 
lymitana], par Jacques de Vitry. [1096 
—1220.] G. 22. 

Faits et gestes du prince Tancrede [de 
Sicilel pendant I'expedition de Jerusalem, 
par Eaoul de Caen. [1096—1105.] G. 23. 

Histoire de la premiere croisade, par 
Eobert le Moine. [1095—1099.] G. 23. 

Histoire des croisades, par Foulcher de 
Chartres. [1095—1127.] G. 24. 

■2 D.I. — Collection o{ Documents inSdits, 
published by the French Government. 



Sources of ihe History of France. 



569 



Histoire de la croisade de Louis VII., 
par Odoa de Deuil. [1146—1148.] G. 
24. 

Histoire de Normandie, par Orderio 

Vital. [ —1141.] G 25—28. S.H.P. 

5 vols. 8vo, 

Histoire des Normands, par Guillaume 
de Jumiege. [850—1137.] G. 29. 

Vie de GuiUaume le Conquerant, par 

Guillatune de Poitiers. [ — 1070.] 

G. 29. 

Histoire de la guerre de Navarre en 1276 
et 1277, par Guillaume Anelier, de Tou- 
louse. D.I. 4to. 

Les Grandes Cliroiiiques de France. 
[376-1381.] Paris, Techener, 6 vols 8vo. 

Geoffrey de Ville-Hardouiu, de la con- 
queste de Constantinople. [1198-1207.] 
Mi. i. 1. Bu. 3. P. i. 1.3 See also M. Na- 
talis de Wailly's edition, royal 8vo. ^ous 
tons les rapports cette chronique offre un 
vifinteret. (Lalanne.) 

Continuation de I'histoire de Ville-Har- 
douin, d'apres les memoires de Henri de 
Valenciennes. Mi. i. 1. Bu. 43. 

Cuvelier (Robert) chronique de Ber- 
trand Du Guesclin. D I. 4to. An histo- 
rical poem in monorhyme stanzas. 

Chronique metrique de Saint-Magloire. 
[L223— 1292.] Bu. 7. 

Chronique metrique d'Adam de la Halle, 
[1282 ?] Bu. 7. 

Branche des royaux lignages. Chroni- 
que metrique de Guillaume Guiart. [1160 
—1306 ] Bu. 7, 8 

Chronique metrique de Philippe le Bel, 
par Godefroy de Paris. [1300—1316.] 
Bu 9. 

Livre de la taille de Paris en I'an 1313. 
Bu. 9. 

Les chroniques de Jean Froissart. [1325 
—1400] Bu. 10— 25. SM.F. in progress. 
N'a pas d'a.utre passion que celle de voir 
et de narrer. 

Memoires du Sire de Joinville. See also 
M. Natalis de Wailly's splendid edition, 
published by Didot. [1245—1270.] Mi. 
i. 1. P. i. 2. S.H.F. Plus sensi. qu'en- 
thousiaste, plus fin que passionnd. (La- 
lanne.) 

Lettre de Jean-Pierre Sarrazins, cham- 
bellan du roi de France, ^ Nicolas Ar- 



3 Mi. Collection of Memoirs published 
by Messrs. Michaud and Poujoulat. 

Bu. Collection of Memoirs published by 
M. Buchon. 

P. Memoirs published by Messrs. Petitofc 
and Monmerque. 



rode, sur la premiere croisade de Saint 
Louis. [1248—1261.] Mi. i. 1, 

Extraits des historiens arabes, relatifa 
aux deux croisades de Saint Louis. [1243 
—1270.] Mi. i. 1. 

5. — The Yalois. 

Anciens memoires du XIV^ siecle sur 
Bertrand du Guesclin. [1320—1380.] 
Mi. i. 1. P. i. 4. 

Chronique des quatre premiers Valois. 
[1327—1393.] SH.F.8V0. 

Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du 
sage roy Charles [V.], par Christine de 
Pisau. [1336—1380.] Mi. i. 1, 2. P. i. 
8. S.H.F. 8vo. An authentic narrative, 
hut written in too pompous a style. 

La chronique du bon due Louis de 
Bourbon, [1360—1410.] S.H.F. 8vo. 

Le livre des faicts du bon messire Jean 
le Maingre, dit mareschal de Boucicaut. 
[1368—1421.] Mi. i 2. P. 6, 7. 

Chronique du Religieux de Saint Denis. 
[1380-1422.] D.L 6 vols. 4to. 

Histoire de Charles VI., roy de France, 
par Jean Juvenal des Ursins. [1380 - 
1422.] Mi. i. 2. 

Monstrelet (Enguerrandde), chroniquea 
[1400-1444]. Bu. 26— 32. S.H.F. 6 vols. 
Svo. Very valuable, hut most tediously 
luritten. Contain a number of official docu- 
ments. 

Lefevre de Saint-Remy (Jean), me- 
moires. [1407— 1435.J Bu. 32, 33. 

Memoires de Pierre de Fenin. [1408 — 
1425.] Mi. i. 2. P. i. 7. Very partial on 
the Burgundian side. 

Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le 
regne de Charles VI. [1408—1422.] Mi. 
i. 2. 

Cousinot (Guillaume), Chroniaue de la 
Puoelle. [1422—1429.] 12mo. ' An inte- 
resting ivork. 

Cochon (Pierre), chronique Normande. 
[1118 — 1430.] A decided champion of the 
Armagnacs. 

Memoires concernant la Pucelle d'Or- 
leans. [1422—1429,] Mi. i. 3. Bu. 34. 
P. i. 3. 

Chartier (Jean) chronique de Charles 
VII. [1422—14^^1.] 

Histoire d'Artus III., due de Bretaigne, 
comte de Richemont et connestable de 
France, contenant ses memorables faicts 
depuis I'an 1413 jusques k I'an 1457 ; mise 
en lumiere par Th. Godefroy. Mi. i. 3. 
P. 1—8. 

Memoires relatifs k Florent, sire d'll- 
liers [par Denis Godefroy], Mi. i. 3. 
P. i. 8, 



570 



History of France. 



Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous le 
r^gne de Charles VII. [1422-1449.] Mi. 
i. 3. Ba. 40. 

Las l<^r at 2^ livre des memoires de mes- 
sire Olivier de la Marche. [1435—1488.] 
Mi. i. 3. Precieux pour Vhistoire du 
temps. 

S'ensuyt I'estafc de la maison du duo 
Charles de Bourgongne, dit le Hardy, 
compose par Olivier de la Marche. [1474.] 
Mi. i. 3. P. i. 9, 10. 

Memoires de Jacques du Clercq, siaur 
de Beauvoir en Ternois. [1448 — 1467.] 
Mi. i. 3. Bu. 37—40. P. i. 11. Full of 
details on the dukes of Burgundy. 

Chronique de Mathieu de Coussy (or 
d'Escouchv). [1444—1461.] Bu. 35, 36. 
S.H.F. 3. vols. 8vo. 

Memoires de Philippe de Comines. 
[1464—1498.] Mi.i.4. Pi. 11 -13. S.H.F, 
3 vols. 8vo. II voit son tein'ps tel qu'il 
est, et le peint avec des couleurs qui ne 
viennent point de I'ecole. (Lalanne.) 

Les ohroniquesdu tres-chrestien et tres- 
victorieux Louys de Valois, feu roy de 
France, unziesme de ce nom ; avecques 
plusieurs aultres adveutures advenues 
tant en ce royaume de France, comme es 
pays voisins. [1460—1483.] Mi. i. 4. P. 
i. 13 — 14. Cette chronique e.->t a/ppelee 
Men a tort " Chronique Scandaleuse." (La- 
lanne.) 

Basin (Thomas), Histoire de Charles 

VII. et de Louis XI. S.H.F. 4 vols. 8vo. 
Precieuse chronique , (Lalanne.) 

Journal des £tats generaux de 1484, par 
Jean Masseliu. D. i. 4to. 

Memoires de Guillaume de Villaneuve. 
[1494—1497.] Mi. i. 4. P. i. 14. Invalu- 
able for the history of the wars of Charles 

VIII. in Italy. 

Panegyrique da chevallier sans repro- 
che, Louis de la Tremoille, par Jean 
Bouchet. [1460—1525.] Mi. i. 4. P. i. 14. 

Tres-joyeuse, plaisante et recreative 
histoire du bon chevalier sans paour et 
sans reprouche, coraposee par le loyal ser- 
viteur. [1476—1520.] Mi. i, 4. S.H.F. 8vo. 
P. i. 15, 16. Un des chefs-d'oeuvre de notre 
langue. (Lalanne.) 

Chronique du bon chevalier messire 
Jacques de Lalain, pere et compagnon de 
I'ordi-e de la toison d'Or, par messire 
Georges Chastellain. [1430—1453.] Bu.41. 

Declaration de tous les hautz faictz et 
glorieases adventures du due Philippe do 
Bourgongne, par messire Georges Chas- 
tellain, son indiciaire [historiographe]. 
[1464—1470.] Bu. 42, 43. 

Chroniques de Jean MoHnet. £1470 — 
1506.] Bu. 43. 47. 



6. — Branch of Orleans. 

Histoire des choses mem( rabies adve- 
nues du reigne de Louis XII. et Fran9ois 
1^^, par Robert de la Marck, seigneur de 
Fleurange. [1499—1521.] Mi. i. 5. P. 
i. 16. CurieusD memoires .... rivacitS 
na'ive et un peu favfaronne. (Lalanne.) 

Journal de Louise de Savoye. [1476 — 
1522.] Mi. i. 5. P. i. 16. Short, hut very 
interesting. 

Les memoires de messire Martin du 
Bellay, seigneur de Langey, chevalier de 
I'ordre du roy, capitaine de cinquante 
hommes d'armes de ses ordonnances, et 
son lieutenant general en ses pays et 
duche de Normandie, ea I'absence de mon- 
seigneur le Daiaphin. [1512 — 1534.] Mi. 
i. 5. 

Las memoires de messire Guillaume du 
Bellay. [1535—1536.] Mi. i. 5. P. i. 17, 
18, 19. 

7. — Branch of Valois- Angouleme, 

Les memoires de messire Martin du 
Bellav. [1536—1547.] Mi. i. 5. P. i. 
18, 19. 

Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous 
le regno de Fran9ois ler. [1515—1536 ] 
S H.F. 8vo. 

Memoires-joumaux de Fran9ois de Lor- 
raine, due d'Aumale et de Guise. [1547 
—1563.] Mi. i 6. 

Memoires du prince de Conde. Eecueil 
des choses memorables faites et passees 
pour le faict de la religion et estat de ce 
royaume, depuis la morfc du roy Henry II. 
jusqu'en I'annee 1564. [1559—1564.] Mi. 
i. 6 

Memoires d'Antoine du Paget, sieur de 
Saint-Marc, relatifs aux troubles de Pro- 
vence. [1561—1596.] Mi. i. 6. 

Commentaires de messire Blaise de 
Montluc, mareschal de France. [1521 — 
1574.] Mi. i. 7. S H.F. 5 vols. 8vo. P. i. 
20 — 22. II faui faire soigneusem e)\t la 
part du caractere fanfaron de Vautewr. 
(Lalanne.) 

Commentaires des derni&res guerres en 
la Gaule Belgique, entre Henry second du 
nom, tres-chrestien roy de France, et 
Charles cinquiesme, empereur, et Philippe 
son fils, roy d'Espaigne, par Fi'an9ois de 
Eabutin. [1551—.] Mi. i. 7. P. i. 31, 32. 

Memoires sur Gaspard de Saulx, seig- 
neur de Tavannes. [1515 — 1573.] Mi. i. 
8. P. i. 23. 

Memoires de Guillaume de Saulx, seig- 
neur de Tavannes. [1560 — 1595.] Mi. 
i. 8. P. i. 35. 

Le siege de Metz par Bertrand de Sali- 
gnac. [1552.]. Mi. i. 8. P. i. 32. 



Sources of the History of France. 



571 



Discoura de Gaspard de Coligny, oil sont 
Bommairement contenaes les choses qui se 
Bont passees durant le siege de Saint- 
Quentin. [1557.] Mi. i. 9. P. i. 32. 

Memoire de la Chastre, sur le voyage de 
M. le duo de Guise en Italie. [1556 — 
1557 ] Mi. i. 8. P. i. 32. 

M^moires de Guillaume de Eochechou- 
art. [1497—1565.] Mi. i. 8. P. i. 33. 

Memoires de Claude Haton. [1553 — 
1582.] D i. 2 vols. 4to. 

Memoires d'Achille Gamon. [1558 — 
1586.] Mi. i. 4. P. i. 34 

8. — r/ie Bourbons. 

Memoires de Jean PMlippi. [1560 — 
1590.] Mi. i 8. P. i. 34. 

Memoires de la vie de Fran9ois de See- 
peaux, mareschal de Vielleville. [1527 — 
1571.] Mi i. 9. P. i. 26—28. 

Memoires de Michel de Castelnau, 
[1559—1570.] Mi. i. 9. P. i. 33. Me- 
moires fort interessants. (Lalanne.) 

Memoires de Jean de Mergey. [1554 — 
1589.] Mi. i. 9. P. i. 34. 

Memoires de Fran9ois de la Noue. [1562 
—1570.] Mi. i. 9. P. i. 34. On the 
Protestant side, but impartial, and well 
written. 

Brant6me (Pierre de Bourdeille, sieur 
de) Vies des grands capitaines, dames 
illustres, etc. S.H.F. 9 vols. 8vo. Le plus 
fidele miroir des moeurs de cette dpoque. 
(Lalanne.) 

Memoires de Boyvin du Villars. [1550 
—1569.] Mi. i. 10. P. i. 28—30. Curieux, 
ei ecrits d'un ton de franchise et de verity. 
(Boissonade.) 

Memoires de Marguerite de Yalois. 
[1569-1582.] Mi. i. 1.^ P. i. 37. S.H.F. 
8vo. 1842, S'est peinte d'une plume 
ISgere. 

Memoires de messire Pldlippe Hurault, 
Gomte de Cheverny. [1553—1599.] Mi. 
i. 10. P. i. 36. The transactions carried 
on by the royalist party a/re explained in 
detail. 

Memoires de PhUippe Hurault, abb^ de 
Pontlevoy, eveque de Chartres. [1599 — 
1601.] Mi. i. 10. P. i. 36. 

Memoires de Henri de la Tour d'Au- 
vergne, due de Bouillon, adressez a son 
fils le prince de Sedan. [1555 — 1586.J 
Mi. i. 11. P. i. 35. 

Memoires du due d'Angouleme, pour ser. 
vir a I'histoire des regnes de Henri III. et 
de Henri IV. [1589—1593.] Mi i. 11. 
P. i. 44. 

Memoires de Th. Agrippa d'Aubigne. 
[1551 — 1562.] 8vo. Ne doivent etre lus 
qv/a/vec une certaine mejiance. (Lalanne.) 



Memoires d'Estat de Moiisieur de Ville- 
roy, secretaire des commandemens des 
rois Charles IX., Henri III., Henri IV., et 
Louis Xin. [1574—1594.1 Mi. i. 11. P.i. 
44. 

Memoires de Jacques-Auguste de Thou. 
[1553—1601.] Mi. i. 11. P. i. 37. These 
memoirs, originally written in Latin, form 
part of the author's great work " Bistoria 
sui temporis." 

Memoires de Jean Choisnin. [1571 — 
1573.1 Mi. i. 11. P. 38. 

Relation faite par maitre Jacques Gil- 
lot, de ce qui se passa au Parlemont 
touchant la regence de la reine Marie de 
Medicis. [1610.] Mi. i. 11. P. i. 49. 

Memoires du marquis de Beauvais- 
Nangis. [1562—1641.] S.H.F. 

Journal du proces du marquis de la 
Boulaye. [Maximilien fichalard. Decem- 
ber 1649, May, 1650.] S.H.F. 

Memoires de Mathieu Merle, baron de 
Salavas. [1570—1580.] Mi. i. 11. P. i.38. 

Memoires de Jacques Pape, seigneur de 
Saint-Auban. [1572—1587.] Mi. i. 11. 
P. i. 43. 

Memoire fidele des choses qui se sont 
passees a la mort de Louis XIII., par 
Dubois, Tan des valets de chambre de 
S.M. [1643.] Mi. i. 11. 

Memoires de Michel de Marillao. [1593 
—1594.] Mi. i. 11. P. i. 49. 

Memoires de Claude Groulart, ou voya- 
ges par lui faits en cour. [J 588 — 160o.] 
Mi. i. 11. P. i. 49. Feignent en traits 
vifs et caractdristiques toute la chsse 
grave de la society de cette epoque. 
(Poirson.) 

Chronologie novenaire de Palma Cayet. 
[1576—1597.] Mi. i. 12. 

Chronologie septenaire de Palma Cayet. 
[1598—1604.] Mi. i. 12. P. i. 38—43. 
Ouvrages fort importants. (Lalanne.) 

Memoires et correspondance de Jacques 
Nonipar de Caumont, due de la Force 
[1572 — 1640.] Renseignements precieum 
sur des points particuliers. (Poirson.) 

Memoires et journal de Pierre de I'Es- 
toile. [. . . —1574.] 

Registre journal de Henri III, roi de 
France et de Pologne, par P. de I'Estoile. 
[1574—1589.] Mi. ii. 1. 

Memoires et journal de Pierre de I'Es- 
toile. — Regne de Henri IV., royde France 
et de Navarre. [1589—1610.] 

Memoires et journal de Pierre de I'Es. 
toile. — R^gne de Loys XIII., roy de France 
et de Navarre. [1610—1611.] Mi. ii. 1. 
P. i. 45 — 49. A new and complete edition 
of these interesting and valuable journals 
is now in progress. 



572 



History of France. 



Memoires des sages et royales cecono- 
mies d'Estat de Henry le Grand, ou n)e- 
moires de Sully. [1570—1611. Mi. ii. 2, 
3. P ii. 1 — 9. Pleins de faits et pr^cieux 
pour Vliistoire. (Lalanne.) 

Les negociations da president Jeannin. 
[1598—1609.] Mi. ii. 4. P. ii. 11—15 

Melanges diplomatiques du president 
Jeannin. [1595—1623.] Mi. ii. 4. P. ii. 
16. Deploya une capacite egale d son 
inUgrite. (Lalanne.) 

Memoires de Pran9ois Duval, marquis 
de Pontenay-Mareuil. [1609—1647.] Mi. 
ii. 5. P. i. 50 — 51. Mdmoires intercs- 
sants. (lalanne.) 

Memoires de P. Phelypeaux de Pont- 
cbartrain. [1610—1620.] Mi. ii. 5. P. ii. 
16, 17. 

Conference de Loudun. [1616.] Mi. 
ii. 3. 

Memoires du due de Rohan. [1610 — 
1629 ] Mi. ii. 5. P. ii. 18, 19. Un des 
plus heaux monuments historiques et lilti- 
raires de cctte epoque. (Haag.) 

Memoires du duo de Rohan sur la guerre 
de la Valteline. [1630—1637.] Mi. ii. 5. 

Memoires du marechal de Bassompierre. 
[1579-1640.] Mi. ii. 6. P. ii. 19—21. 
S.H.P. 3 vols. Pleins de details prScieux 
et autJientiques. 

Memoires de Madame de Momay. [1549 
— 1606.] S.H.F. 2 vols. Nofrration sincere, 
lionnete, sans restriction. (Poirson.) 

Memoires du marecbal d'Estrees. [1610 
—1617.] Mi. ii. 6. P. ii. 16. 

Memoires du sieur de Pontis. [1597 — 
1652.] Mi. ii. 6. P. ii. 31. Memoires 
a classer parmi les romans historiques. 
(D'Avrigny.) 

Memoires du cardinal de Richelieu. 
[1600—1638.] Mi. ii. 7—9. P. ii. 21 lis 
— 30. De Za plus haute importance. Leur 
authenticity avait 6te Men d tort attaquee 
par Voltaire. (Lalanne.) 

LesHistoriettes de Tallemant des Reaux. 
Paris, Techener, 9 vols. 8vo. Anedotes 
de tout genre sur les hovimes de la pre- 
miere moitie du xvi 's. siecle. 

Testament de S. E. Arrnand-Jean du 
Plessis, cardinal due de Richelieu. [1642.] 
Mi. ii. 9. 

Memoires d'Amauld d'Andilly. [1600 
—1656.] Mi. ii. 9. P. ii. 33, 34. 

Memoires de Mathieu Mole. [1614 — 
1650.] S.U.P. 4 vols. Documents depov/r- 
vus d'interet. (Lalanne.) 

Memoires de I'abbe Antoine Amauld. 
[1634r-1675.] Mi. ii. 9. P. ii. 34. 

Memoires de Gaston, duo d' Orleans. 
1608—1636.] Mi. ii. 9. P. ii. 31. 

Memoires de la duchesse de Nemours. 



[1648-1653.] Mi. ii. 9. P. ii. 34. Me- 
moires piquants, spirituels, inais un peu 
sees. (Ste. Beuve.) 

Memoires de Madame de Motteville. 
[1630—1666.] Mi. ii. 10. P. ii. 86—40. 
Portent au plus haut degre, dans leur 
alht/re negligee, le caractere de la verite. 
(Lalanne.) 

Memoires du Pere Pr. Berthed. [1652 
—1653.] Mi. ii. 10. P. ii. 48. 

La vie du cardinal de Rais. [1630 — 
1655.] Mi. iii. 1. P. ii. 44—46. 

Complement des memoires du cardinal 
de Retz. Redige d'apres les documents 
originaux, par M. Champollion-Pigeac. 
[1654r— 1679.] Mi. iii. 1. An excellent 
edition of the cardinal's m,emoirs forms 
part of Messrs Hachette's collection, "Les 
Grands ficrivains de la France," and is 
now in progress. 

Memoires de Guv Joly. [1643—1665.] 
Mi. iii. 2. P. ii. 4?" 

Memoires concei-nant le cardinal de Retz, 
par Claude Joly. [1648—1655.] Mi, iii. 

2. P ii. 47- Peuvent etre regardds comme 
la contre-partie des memoires du Cardinal 
de Retz. (Lalanne.) 

Memoires de Pierre Lenet. [1649 — 
1659.] Mi. iii. 2. P. ii. 53, 54. Ecrits 
avec heaucowp de franchise 

Journal d'Olivier Lefevre d'Ormesson. 
[1643—1672.] D.I. 2 vols. 4to. 

Memoires du comte de Brienne, avec 
additions, inedites. [1613 | 1661.] Mi. iii. 

3. P. ii. 35, 36. 

Memoires de Claude de Bourdeille, comte 
de Moatresor. [1633-1637.] Mi. iii. 3. 
P. ii. 54. Tres interessants ; souvent r4- 
imprimes. (Lalanne.) 

Relation faite par le vicomte de Fon- 
trailles. [1642.] Mi. iii. 3. P. ii. 54. 

Memoires du comte de la Chatre. [1638 
— 1643.] Mi. iii. 3. P. ii. 51. 

Memoires de Nicolas Joseph Foucault. 
[1675—1706.] D.I. 

Memoires du comte de Coligny-Saligny. 
[1617—1690. S.H.F. 

Memoires de Daniel de Cosnac. [1650 
— 1701.] S.H.F. 2 vols. Tres curieux, tres 
animes, tres piquants. 

Memoires du marquis le Villette. [1672 
—1704.] S.H.F. 

Extrait des memoires de Henri de Cam- 
pion. Mi. iii. 3. P. ii. 51. Mimoires 
pleins d'interet. A good and complete 
edition of these memoirs was published in 
the " BihUotheque Elzevirienne" of M. P. 
Jannet. 12mO. (Lalanne.) 

Lettres du vicomte de Turenne, pour 
servir d'introduction k seq m.emoires. 
[1627—1643.] Mi. iii. 3. 



Sources of the History of France, 



573 



Memoires du mai'eelial vicomte de Tu- 
renne. [1643—1658.] Mi. iii 3. 

Memoires de Mademoiselle de Montpen- 
sier. [1627—1688.] Mi. iii. 4. P. ii. 40— 
43. Trls v^ridiques, (Sainte Beuve.) 

Memoires de Valentin Oonrart. [1652.] 
Mi. iii. 4 P. ii. 48. 

Memoires du marquis de Montglat. 
[1635—1668] Mi. iii. 5. P. ii. 49—51. 
Offrent des renseignements precieux. 

Memoires du duo de la Rochefoucauld. 
[1630—1652.] Mi. iii. 5. P. ii. 51, 52. 
See also the edition published by Messrs. 
Hachette in the Gra^nds ficrivains. L'his- 
toire de la regence d'Anne d' Autriche y est 
racontde avec nettet4 et une Elegante pre- 
cision. (Lalanne.) 

Memoires de Jean Herault de Gourville. 
[1642—1697.] Mi. iii. 5. P. ii. 52. Gil 
Bias supSrieur. (Sainte Beuve.) 

Memoires d'Omer Talon. [1630—1653.] 
Mi. iii. 6. P. ii. 60—63. 

Memoires de I'abbe de Choisy. [1661 — 
1683.] Mi. iii. 6. P. ii. 63. Agreahlement 
Merits. (Lalanne.) 

Memoires du due de Guise. [1647 — 
1648.] Mi iii. 7. P. ii 55, 56. 

Memoires du marechal de Gramont. 
[1604—1677.] Mi. iii. 7. P. ii. 56, 57. 

Relation du passage du Rhin, par le 
comte de Guiche. [1672.] Mi. iii. 7. 

Memoires du marechal du Plessis. [1627 
—1671.] Mi. iii. 7. P. ii. 57. 

Memoires de M. de **" [le comte de 
Bre^y]. [1643—1690.] Mi. iii. 7. P. ii. 
58, 59. 

Me'moires de P. de la Porte. [1624 — 
1666.] Mi. iii. 8. P. ii. 59. 

Histoire de Madame Henriette d'Angle- 
terre. [1659—1670.] Mi. iii. 8. P. ii. 64. 

Memoires de la cour de Prance, pendant 
les annees 1688 et 1689. Mi. iii. 8. P.ii. 65. 

Memoires du maiquis de la Pare. [1672 
—1693.] Mi. iii. 8. P. ii. 65. 

Souvenirs de Madame de Caylus. Mi. 
iii. 8. P. ii. 66. Svdte rapide de portraits 
et d'esqwissea. Elley excelle. (Ste. Beuve.) 



Memoires du marquis de Torcy. [1687 
— 1713.J Mi. iii. 8. P. ii. 67, 68. 

Me'moires du marechal de Yillars. [1672 
—1734.] Mi. iii. 9. P.ii. 68- -71. 

Memoires du comte de Porbin. [1675^ 
1710.] Mi. iii. 9. P. ii. 74, 75. 

Memoires de Duguay-Trouin. [1689 — 
1715.] Mi. iii. 9. P. 75. 

Memoires politiques et militaires, com- 
poses par I'abbe Millot, sur les pieces re- 
cueillies par le due de Noailles. [1682 — 
1766.] Mi. iii. 10. P.ii. 71-74. 

Memoires secrets de Duclos, sur les 
regnes de Louis XIV. et de Louis XV. 
[1700-1726.] Mi. iii. 10. P. ii. 76, 77. 
Abondeni en renseignements. 

Memoires de Madame de Staal. Mi. iii. 
10. P. ii. 77, 78. Forment une des plus 
agrSables lectures. (Vinet.) 

Journal et Memoires du marquis d'Ar- 
genson. [1657—1757.] S.H.P. 5 vols. 8vo. 
II choque, mais il instruit. (Ste. Beuve.) 

Chronique de la Regence et du regne de 
Louis XV., ou journal de Barbier, avocat 
au Parlement. S.H.P. 4 vols. Charpen- 
tier, 8 vols. 12mo. {Best edition^ Tin des 
ouvrages les plus interessants que nous 
ayons sur le xviii^. siecle. (Lalanne.) 

Journal du marquis de Dangeau. [1684 
—1720.] Paris, Didot, 19 vols. 8vo, Ut^le 
d consulter, mais ennuyeux. 

Memoires coTaplets et authentiques du 
due de Saint Simon. [1691—1723.] Paris, 
Hachette, 20 vols. 8vo. JVe doivent etre 
lus qu' avec une certame precaution, can- les 
erreurs, volontaires ou non, n'y sont pas 
rares. (Lalanne.) 

Journal et memoires de Mathieu Marais, 
avocat au Parlement de Paris. [1707 — 
1733.] Paris, Didot, 4 vols. 8vo. In- 
teressants. 

Memoires du due de Luynes sur la cour 
de Louis XV. [1735—1758.] Paris, Didot, 
17 vols. 8vo. Journal A peu pres dans le 
mime genre gue eelui de Dangea/u. (La- 
lanne.) 



574 



History of France. 



>~J3 



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0/ g a ri 

C S c S 0) &. , '^ i_ i^ 1^ 

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aOrjO^r^otrr'oco 



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Division of Fief n , 
The essential prin- 
ciple of a ftef was 
a mutual contract 
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fidelity. 


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used in conferring 
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Historical Tables. 



575 



-TABLE OF THE FEUDAL DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF 
PRANCE, ABOUT THE END OF THE NINTH CENTURY. 



Dnchy of Gascony, became hereditary in . 872 

Viscounty of B^arn 819 

County of Toulouse . . . • . 850 

Marquisate of Septimania • • . . 878 

County of Barcelona 

County of Carcassonne ..... 819 

Viscounty of Narlionne . . . . ' . 803 

County of Roussillon ..... 812 

County of Urgel . . 

County of Poitiers 

County of Auvergne . 

Duchy of Aquitaine . 

County of Angouleme , 

County of P&'igord . 



Viscounty of Limoges, became hereditary in 887 

Lordship of Bourbon 890 

County of the Lyonnais .... 890 

Lordship of Beaujolais . . . • . 890 

Duchy of Burgundy . • . , , 887 

County of Chalons ...... 886 

Duchy of France ...... 830 

County of Vexin ...... 878 

County of Vermandois ... about 880 

County of Valois • • • . about 880 

County of Ponthieu ..... 859 

County of Boulogne • . . • about 860 

County of Anjou ...... 875 

County of Maine ...... 853 

County of Brittany • • * . . 824 



D.— TABLE OF THE FEUDAL DISMEMBERMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF 
FRANCE, ABOUT THE END OF THE TENTH CENTURY. 



Duchy of Grascony, became hereditary in . 875 

Viscounty of B^am 819 

Viscounty of Bigorre, end of the 9th century 

County of Fezensac 920 

County of Armagnac 960 

County of Lectoure, end of the 10th century 

County of Astarac .... about 930 

County of Toulouse 850 

County of Barcelona 864 

County of Rouergne 820 

County of Carcassonne 819 

Viscounty of Narbonne, end of the 9th cent. 
County of Melgueil, commencement of the 
9th century 
Lordship of Montpellier . . . .975 
County of Roussillon, middle of the 9th cent. 

County of TJrgel 884 

County ot Poitiers ...... 880 

Duchy of Aquitaine 864 

County of Auvergne 864 

County of Angouleme 866 

County of PMgord 866 

County of Lower March ..... 866 

Viscounty of Limoges 887 

Viscounty of Turenne, middle of the 9th cent. 

Viscounty of Bourges 927 

Lordship of Bourbon, end of the 9th century 

County of Macon . . • . • 920 



Duchy of Burgundy, became hereditary in 877 

County of Chalons 836 

Lordship of Salins 920 

County of Nevers . . . ... 987 

County of Tonnerre, end of the 10th century 

County of Sens 914 

County of Champagne, end of the 9th cent. 

County of Blois 834 

County of Rethel, middle of the 10th century 
County of Corbeil, middle of the 10th century 
Barony of Montmorency, middle of the 10th 
century 

County of Vexia ...... 873 

County of Meulan ...... 959 

County of Vermandois 8S0 

County of Valois 880 

County of Soissons, end of the 10th century 

County of Reims 940 

County of Ponthieu 859 

County of Boulogne 8fi0 

County of Guinea 965 

County of Vendome, end of the 10th century 

Duchy of Normandy 912 

County of Anjou 870 

County of Maine ...... 853 

Lordship of Bellemo 840 

County of Brittany 

Barony of Foug^res, end of the 10th cent. 1008 

County of Flanders 860 



576 



History of France. 



E— TABLE SHOWnSTG THE CONSTITUTION OP THE PARLIAMENT OF PAB.TS. 

Pbesons coMPBisiNG THE PAKLiiMEiTT : — The king ; the princes of the blood royal ; the 
peers of the realm ; the chancellor ; fhe conseillers cThonneur; toar muitrps des regiteteg 
dtt conseil du roi; the procicreur-ffeiieral (solicitor), and his substifuts iassi;^tants) ; three 
avocats du roi (king's counsel) ; two premiers presidents ; nine presidents a mortier; a 
number of councillors. 

Ikfeeioh officees : — One registrar in chief {grejfier) for civil cases, one for criminal 
cases, and one for presentations; four notaries and secretaries of the court; several 
epecial registrars ; one usher [kuissier) in chief ; twenty-two subordinate ones. 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENTS, 
with the date of their creation. 
Aix, 1501 ; Dombes, 1-53 i ; Pan, 1620 ; 

Besan?on, 1 676 ; Grenoble, 1453; Rennes, 1553; 

Bordeaux, 1462 ; Metz, 16 J5 ; Rouen, 1499. 

Bourges or Dijon, 1477; Nancy, 1769; Toulouse, 1302. 

Brittany, 1553 ; _ Normandy, 1499 ; Tournai and Douai, 1668. 

Tho grand conseil. which f The grand conseil re- 
/^ wa-i both a tribunal / maineil a special court 
of justice. 



O-r; 
o cS 



11 



o 
02 .d 

M « 

<. o 

II 

i 



judging in certain spe- 
cial cases, and a poli- 
tical council. Charles 
Viil modified its func- 
tions (1497), assii^ning (J 
them to two different 
courts : — 



The conseil d'etat pre- 
served the political 
functions. It ■was sub- 
divided into four sec- 
tions which were or- 
ganized by Richelieu 
(1624). 



r 



\ 



The conseil d'en haut, 
also called conseil se- 
cret,orco7iseildu cabinet, 
for the discussions of 
foreign political to- 
pics. Its members 
were exclusively the 
princes of the blood, 
and the ministers. 
A judiciHl court. 
A treasury or financial 

court. 
A court for the settle- 
ment of home ques- 
tions [conseil des de- 
pechea). 
TjO grand' chamhre, chambre da parhment, chambre 
des plaids (by opposition to the chambre des en- 
quefes). This was the most important of all. 
There were held the beds of justice; letters of 
grace, pardon, abolition, etc., were also presented 
and examined at the grand' chambre. It consisted 
of the senior president, nine presidents a mortier, 
twenty-five lay, and twelve clerical councillors. 

2. La chambre de la Toiirnelle. Existed as far back 
as 1436, and judged the only petty cases of a cri- 
minal nature. In 1515 its jurisdiction was ex- 
tended to all cases of the kind. 

3. Les chambres des engtcetes. The first existed at the 
beginning of the 14th centurv ; a second was esta- 
blished in 1319: a third in 1521; a fourth in 1543, 
and a fifth in 1568. The two last were suppressed in 
1756. Preliminary examination of cases of appeal. 

4. La chambre des requetes. Decided on all cases 
brought immediately before the parliament. Its 
earliest organization dates from 1304, or even from 
1291, when Pi]ilip III. appointed three maitres des 
requetes and one notary for the purpose of collecting 
the petitions during the session of the Parliament. 

5. La chambre des vacations, instituted in 1405; con- 
firmed in 1499 and 1519. Judged preliminary civil 
cases, and all criminal cases during the au'.umn 
vacations of the other courts. 

La chambre de la maree was a kind of police court 
or commission established to settle and regulate 
the sale of salt-water fish, and to decide in all 
cases connected with that industry. 

The grands-jours were assizes held at irregular 

periods and in various places in order to despatch 

long-pending law-snits, punish cases of oppres- 

^^ .,..«..,.>/. o .^co wi/..^/.- 1 sion or gross misdemeanour, relieve the suifer- 

tes became sedentary \ ings of the people, etc. Instances of grands-jours 

about the year 1319; ^ occur between the 14th and the 17th centuries. 



The parlement was en- 
trusted with the ad- 
ministration of justice. 
But it soon assumed a 
political character, es- J 
pecially in connection ^ 
with the registration 
(enregistrement) of the 
tuxes (edits bursaux). 
Under the reign of 
Louis XIV. it consisted 
of five courts 
bres) : — 



The chamhre den comp- 



it had to examine and 
regulate the accounts 
of the government offi- 
cers, to settle every- 
thing connected wdth 
the management of , 
the royal domains, \ 
the temporalities of 
the Church, etc. Its 
principal officers were, 
under the reign of I 
Louis XIV:— 



1. One first president, and twelve others. 

2. Seventy-eight masters {mattres des comptee), who 

delivered judgment. 

3. Thirty-eifjht revisers {correcteurs) . These officers 
were established in 1410. 

4. A hundred and eighty-two clerks or audit eurs, 
who had to prepare and draw up the reports. 

5. One attorney -general, and one aoUcitor-generaL 



Historical Tables. 



577 



GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE MEROVINGLiN DYNASTY. 

Clodiou 
(k. 427-448). 

Meroveus 
(k. 448-458). 

■ I 

Childeric I. 

(k. 458-481). 

Clovia 
(k. 481-511). 



Thierry I., 

k. of Austrasia. 

d. 534. 



Chlodoinir, 

k. of Orleans. 

(t 524. 



I 

Childebert I., 

k. of Paris. 

d. 558. 



Clotaire L, 

k. of Soissons, 

sole king, 

(558-561). 



Caribert, Gontran, Sigebert I.^Brunehaut, 

k. of Paris k. of Burgundy k. of Ausiraaia 
(d. 567). and of Orleans (d. 575). 

(d. 593). j 

Childebert II., 
k. of Austrasia and 
Burgundy (cZ. 596). 



Chilperio I., 
k. of Soissons= 
Fredegonde 
(d. 584). 

Clotaire II., 

sole king 

(613-628). 



Theodebert, 

k. of Austrasia 

(d. 312). 



Thierry II., 

k. of Burgundy 

(d. 613). 



Dagobert L, 

sole king 

(628-638). 



Sigebert II., 
k. of Austrasia 
(d. 656). 



Clovis IL, 
(638-656). 



I 

Caribert, 

k. of Aquitaine 

(d. 631). 

Boggis, 
d. of Aquitaine. 

I 
Endes, 
d. of Aquitaine 
(688-735). 



Dagobert II., 

last Merovingian 
k. of Austrasia 
(d. 679). 

Clotaire IV., 
k. of Austrasia 
(d. 719). 



Clotaire III., 

k. of Neustria 

(656-670). 



Childeric TI., 
k. of Austr.isia, 
then sole k. 
(d. 673). 



Thierry III., 
k. oi* Bui'gundy. 



Clovis 
(673-674). 



Chilperio IL Clovis III. 
I (691—695). 



Childeric TIL 
(742-752), 
deposed !|jy Pepin le Bref. 



Childebert III. 
(695-711). 

I 
Dagobert III. 
(711-715). 

Thierry IV. 
(720-737). 
P P 



578 



History of France* 



GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE CARLOYINGIANS. 



Pepin of Landon, 
mayor of the palace in Austrasia 
(d. 639). 



Saint Amulf, 
brother of Pepin 
(d. 640). 



Grimoald 
(d. 656). 



Begga = Anseghia 
I ((Z. 678). 

Pepin of Heristal, 

d. of the Franks 

(d. 714). 



Drogo, 
d. of Champagne 
(cJ. 708). 



Grimoald, 

mayor in 

Neustria 

(d. 714). 



Charles Martel 
(d. 741). 



Childebrand 
(d. 753). 



Carloman, 

becomes a monk 

(747). 



Pepin ie Bref, 
k. of the Franks 
(752-768). 
I 



Grippo 
(d. 753). 



Charlemagne 
(768-814). 

liOuis le Debonnairo 
(814-840). 



Carloman 
(k. 771). 



Lothaire, 
emperor 
(d. 875). 



Lonis II. 
emperor 
(d. 855). 



Lothaire, 

k. of 
Lorraine 
(d. 869). 



Charles, 

k. of 
Burgundy 

and 
Provence 
(d. 863). 



Pepin, 
(d. 838). 



Pepin II. 

k.of 
Aquitaine 



Lonis the 
German, 
(d. 876). 



Charles 

the Fat 

k. and 

emperor 

(d. 888). 



Charles the 

Bald, 

k. of France 

(d. 877). 



Lonis 
the 
Stammerer 
(d. 879). 



Lonis III. 
(d. 882). 



Carloman 
(d. 884). 



Charles the Simple 
(d. 929). 

Lonis rV. 
(k. 954). 



Lothaire 
(d. 986). 

Lonis V. 
\3.. 987). 



Charles 

d. of Lorraine 

(d. 992). 



Historical Tables. 



579 



GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE CAPETIAN DYNASTY. 

L Fbou the Accession of Hugh Oapet to the Accession of thb 
House of Valois. 

Bobert the Strong, count of = Adelaide, daughter of 
Anjou (d. 867). I Louis le Debonnaire. 



Eudes, count of Paris, 
king, 888-898. 



Hugh le Grand or le Blanc, 
king of France and count of Paris. 
{d,. 956). 

Hugh Capet, king, 987-996. 

Robert, k. 996-1031. 



Eobert, duke of France, 
(i. 923). 



EmTaa=Eodolph, or Eaoul, 
king of France, from 
928 to 936. 



Henry I., 
k. 1031-1060. 



Robert, duke of Burgundy. 



Philip I., k. 1060-1108. 



Hugh, founder of i-he 
Capetian counts of Verniandoia 
and Yalois. 



Louis VI. Ge Gros), k. 1108-1137. 

Louis VII. (le Jeune), k. 1137-1180. 

Philip II. (Augustus), k. 1180-1223. 

Louis VIIL, k. 1223-1226. 
. I 



Louis IX. (St. Louis), 
k. 1226-1270. 



Robert, founder 
of the counts of 
Artois. 



Alphonse, count of 
Poitiers and 
Toulouse. 



I 

Charles, count of 

Anjou and Provence, 

founder of the Royal 

House of Naples. 



Philip III. (le Hardi), 
k. 1270-1285. 



Robert, count of Clermont, 
founder of the House of Bourbon. 



Philip IV. (le Bel), 
k. 1285-1314. 



Charles, count of Valois, 
founder of the House of Valois. 



:. (le 



Louis X. (le Hutin), 
k. 1314-1316. 



Jeanne, m. Philip, 

k. of Navarre 

(d. 1349). 

Charles, 
k. of Navarre, 



Philip V. (le Long), 
k. ] 816-1322. 



SP2 



Charles IV. (le Bel), 
k. 1322-1328. 



Isabella, 
lu Edward II. of 
England. 

I 
Edward III. 
of England. 



58o 



History of France, 



GENEALOGICAL TABLE OP THE HOUSE OF VALOIS OF FEANCB. 



Charles, count of Valois, younger son of king Philip III. 

Philip VI., k. 1328-1350. 

John (le Bon), k. 1350-1364 



Charles V. (le Sage), Louis, duke of Anjou, John, duke Philip, duke of Bnr- 
k. 1364-1880. founderof the 2nd royal of Berry. gundy (d. 1404). 

house of Naples. 

Jean Sans peur, killed at Montereau, 1419. 

Philip (le Bon) (cZ. 1467). 

I 
Charles (le Temeraire) ((Z. 1477). 

Mary, duchess of = Maximilian, archduke 
Bargundy I of Austria. 

Philip, archduke of Austria, = Juana, heiress of Cas- 



tillo and Aragon. 



and sovereign of the Nether- 
lands (d. 1506). 

Charles V., king of Spain, sovereign of the Netherlands, 
and empeior, 1519. 



Charles VI. (le Bien-aime), (k. 1380-1422). 
= Isabella of Bavaria. 



Louis, duke of Orleans, 
assassinated I'^OT, founder of the 
line of Valois- Orleans. 



Louis John Charles VII. Isabella Catherine 

.1415). (cZ. 1416). (le Victorieux), =1. Richard TI. of England. r= Henry V. 

k. 1422-1461. 2. Duke of Orleans. of England. 



Louis XI., k. 1461-1483. 



Charles, duke of Berry. 



Charles VIII., 
k. 1483-1498. 



Anne= 
Sire de Beauieiu 



Four daughters. 



I 
Jeanne= 
Duke of Orleans, 
afterwards Louis XIL 



Histarical Tables. 



581 



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582 



History of France. 



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GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE HOUSE OF BOUEBON. 

Robert, count of Clermont = Beatrice, heiress of Bourbon, 1272. 
younger sou of St. Louis. I 



Louis, duke of Bourbon (i. 1341). 



James, count do la Marcbe. 



Peter, duke of Bourbon, 

ancestor of the Constable 

Charles, duke of Bourbon. John, count de la Marcbe= Catherine, heiress of Venddme. 

Louis, count of Vendome {d, 1447). 

John, count of Vendome {d. 1477). 



Francis, count of VendSme. 



Charles, first duke of Vendome. 



Louis, prince of La Roche-sur-Ton 
= Louisa, countess of Montpensier. 
This branch became extinct 1608. 



Antoiae, duke of Vendome = Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre {d. 1572). 

Henry IV. king of France and Navarre, 1589-1610. 
= 1. Marguerite de Valois, d. of Henry n. 
2. Mary de' Medici. 



Louis XIII. king, Gaston, duka of 
1610-16i3=:Amie 
of Austria d. of 
Philip IIL of Spain. 



Elizabeth Christiana Henrietta Maria 



Orleans 


= Philip IV. 


=duke of 


= Charles I. 


(cJ. 1660), 


of Spain 


Savoy 


of England 


i 


(d. 1644). 


(d. 1663). 


(d. 1669). 


"La grande 








mademoiselle " 








{d. 1693). 









Louis XtV. king, 1643-1715 

=Maiia Theresa, d. of 

Philip IV. of Spain. 



Philip, duke of Orleans 

(founder of the branch of Bourbon-Orleans) 

(,d. 1701). 



Louis, the dauphin, ob. 1711=Mary Anne Christine Victoire of Bavaria. 



Lonis, duke of Burgundy 

(i. 1712) = Mary Adelaide 

of Savoy. 



Philip V. of Spain. 



Charles, duke of Berry 
(d. 1714). 



Louis XV. king, 1715-1774-= Mary Leczynska of Poland. 



Louis, the dauphin {d. 1765). 
I 



\ 
Six daughters. 



Louis XVI. Louis Stanislas Xavier, Charles Philip Three 

king, 177-1-1793. count of Provence, count of Artois, daughters. 

= Marie Antoinette afterwards Louis XVIII. afterwards Charles X. 

of Austria, king, 1814-1824. king, 1824-1830. {d. 1836). 



Ill I 

Maria Theresa Louis XVn. Louis, duke of Charles Ferdinand, duke of 

Louis, duke {d, 1795). Angouleme Berry, assassinated, Feb. 1820. 

of Angouleme. = Maria Theresa, 

daughter of Louis XVI. 



Henry, duke of Bordeaux, 
comte de Cliambord— " Hem-y V." 



Louisa, 
doohesa of Parma. 



5S4 



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INDEX. 



Abdel-Ehaman, 38. 

Abelard, 103 ; a Freethinker, Ms struggles 

with the Church, 104. 
Academy, the French, founded by Eiche- 

lieu, 363. 
, the (see also French Academy), 

and Comeille's Cid, 365 j and Eacine, 

429. 

of Sciences, the, 434; and Fonte- 



nelle, 514. 
Acadia, French colony of, and M. de 

Monts, 489; and the Treaty of Utrecht, 

491. 
Acadians, Emigration of, to the Bay of 

Fundy, 492. 
Adalhard, Scholar of the School of the 

Palace, time of Charlemagne, 50, 
Adams, John, 548. 
Adhemar, Bishop of Puy, 76. 
A.drets, Baron, 294. 
Adrian I., Pope, 44. 
>5]duans, the, 3, 8. 
^gidius, Eoman General, 29. 
u^tius, Eoman General, 28. 
Agatha (Agde), Founding of, 2. 
Agenois ceded to Edward I. of England 

by Philip III., 122. 
Agincourt, the battle of, Oct. 25, 1415, 

178. 
Agnadello, the battle of, between the 

French under Louis XII. and the Vene- 
tians, 1509, 231. 
Agobard, scholar of the School of the 

Palace, time of Charlemagne, 50. 
Aguesseau, Chancellor d', 449; exiled, 

458. 
Aigues - Mortes, meeting at, between 

Francis I. and Charles V., 261. 
Aiguillon, the Duke of, 501, 507. 
Aire, John d', 149. 

Aix-ia-Chapelle, residence of Charle- 
magne, 46; the Peace of, 1668, 878; 

Peace Congress and Treaty of 1748, 

477. 
Alais, the Peace of, 354. 
Alaric II., King of the Visigoths, 30. 
Alans, the, 28. 



Alauda, the, Julius Csesar's "Wakeful" 

Gallic Legion, 17. 
Albemarle, the Duke of, 396. 
Alberoni, 455 ; fall of, 456. 
Albigensians, the, 104 ; crusade against, 

105, 106 ; and Louis VIII., 111. 
Albret, Jeanne d', 297. 
Alcuin, 45. 
Aldred, Archbishop of York, anoints 

Harold King of England, 69. 
Alen9on, the Duke d', killed at Agincourt, 

179. 
Alesia, the town of, 15. 
Alexander IV., Pope, and St. Louis, 119. 
VI., Pope, 222, 223; and Louia 

XII., 229. 
Alexis Comnenus, the Emperor, and the 

Crusaders, 76, 81 
Allemanians, the, invade the settlements 

of the Franks, a.d. 496, 29, 
AUobrogians, the, 8, 9. 
Almanza, the battle of, l707, 390. 
Alphonso II., King of Naples, and Charles 

VIII., 223, 
Alps, the, crossed by Francis I. and his 

army, 243. 
Alsace, 368; restored to France, 398. 
Alviano, Barthelemy d', at the battle of 

Agnadello, 231. 
Amadeo, Victor, Duke of Savoy, 385, 390, 

391, 392 ; and Law, the Scotch adven- 
turer, 448, 449, 
Amboise, Cardinal d', 229; death and 

character, 232. 
, the Peace and Edict of, 1563, 

295, 296 
Ambrons, the, and Teutons, the, defeated 

by the Eomans under Marius at the 

Campi Putridi, 102 B.C., 9. 
America and French enterprise, 488. 
American Independence, the Declaration 

of, July 4, 1776, 543. 
American Colonies, the, independence of 

recognized by England, 548. 
War of Independence, the, 540 

et seq. 
Ampsuarians, the, a tribe of the Franks, 27. 
Amsterdam, gallant defence of, against 

Louis XIV. 379, 



586 



History of France. 



Amyot, James, 359. 
Anastasius, Emperor of the East, 32, 
Ancenis, tlie Treaty of, 14G8, 204. 
Ancre, Marshal d' (see also Concini), 

death of, 337. 
Andelot, Francis d', 297. 
Angilbert, scholar of the School Of the 

Palace, time of Charleraagne, 50. 
Anjou,, the Duke of, and Charles VI., 

171. 
■ , the Duke of, son of John It , 

breaks his word of honour and escapes 

to Erance, 161. 

-, Henry, Duke of, and the massa- 



ore of St. Bartholomew, 300; and the 

siege of La Rochelle in 1573, 305; 

elected King of Poland, 305 ; recalled 

from Poland to the crown of France as 

Henry III., 306. 
— , the Duke of, becomes Philip V. 

of Spain by the will of Charles II., 388, 
Anne of Austria and Louis XIII., 337 ; 

and the Broussel affair, 369. 
Anne de Beaujeu, 217, 221 ; government 

of, 218. 
Anne of Brittany, 220; marriage of, with 

Charles VIIL, 221; wife of Louis XII., 

239. 
Anne, Queen of England, and the Duke 

of Marlborough, 388. 
Anselm, St., 265. 

Antioch and the Crusaders, 77, 79. 
Antipolis (Antibes), founding of, 2. 
Antoinette, Marie, and Louis XVI., 551 ; 

and court intrigues, 552 ; growing un- 
popularity of, 554 ; increase of the 

popular feeling ag-ainst, 555. 
Antwerp surrenders to Louis XV., 475. 
Aquae Sextise (Aix), the first Eoman 

settlement in Transalpine Gaul, 123 

B.C., 8. 
Aquinas", St. Thomas, 265. 
Aquitania, 34; conquered by the Visigoths, 

30 ; district of, 35. 
Aquitanian province, the, of ancient Gaul, 

2, 17. 
Aquitanians, the, 2. 
Arabs, the, 37, 44 ; incursions of the, in 

Southern Gtiul, 38. 
Arbogastes, a leader of the Franks, 27. 
Arelate (Aries), the town of, 2. 
Argenson, Marquis d', 476; and the 

Orleans Regency, 452 ; quoted, 462, 

469; and M. de Lally, 486; and the 

decline of the kingship in France, 494 ; 

dismissed by Louis XV., 497. 
Arians, the, 29. 
Ariovistus, 10, 11 ; is defeated by Julius 

Caesar, 12. 
Armagnao, Count Bernard d', 177. 
. , the Constable, torn to pieces 

by the mad mob of Burgundians, 180, 



Armagnao, Count James d', and Louis XL, 

202, 212. 
Armagnacs and Burgundians, civil war 

between the, 179. 

■ , Massacre of the, 180. 

Armoric League, the, 3. 
Armcrica, the Britons of, 3. 
Army reforms of Louvois, 404. 
Arnaulds, the, and M. de St. Cyran, 414, 

415. 
Arouet, Francois Marie, see Voltaire. 
Arques, battle of, gained by Henry IV., 

318. 
Arras, siege of, July 1414, 178 ; the Peace 

of (1435), 191 ; treaty at, in 1482, be- 
tween Louis XL, and Maximilian of 

Austria, 215. 
Artevelde, James Van, the brewer of 

Ghent, and Edward III. of England, 

142. 
, Philip Van, leader of the in- 
surgent Flemings, 172. 
Artois, Count Robert of, commands the 

army of Philip IV. raised to subdue the 

revolt in Flanders, and is defeated 

and killed at the battle of Courtrai, 

124. 
Arvernians, the, 3. 
Assas, Chevaher d', heroic death of, 

502. 
Assembly of Notables, convocation of the, 

proposed by M. de Calonne (1787), 

555. 
Assizes of Jerusalem, Godfrey de Bouillon's 

Code of Laws, 79. 
Ataulph, King of the Visigoths, 28. 
Attila, the famous Hun King, 28. 
Aubin du- Cormier, St., battle of, 220. 
Audenarde, the battle of, 391. 
Augsburg, the League of, 1686, 384. 
Augustus, sole master of the Eoman 

world, 17 ; forms roads in Gaul, 17- 

III. of Poland, death of, 465. 

, Stanislaus, of Poland, 465. 

Auneau, the battle of, 310. 

Auray, battle of, costs Charles of Blois 

his life and the countship of Brittany, 

144. 
Aurelian, the Roman Emperor, 20. 
Aurelius, Marcus, 19 ; persecutes the 

Christians, 25. 
Aurillac, Gerbert de, 265. 
Austrasia, kingdom of, 33, 35. 
Austria and France, commencement of 

the rivalry between, 211. 

and Henry IV., 331. 

and the Partition of Poland, 

1772, 510. 

-, Margaret of (see also Margaret), 



216. 



337. 



Anne of, wife of Louis XIIL, 



Index. 



587 



Avaux, M. d', 368. 

Avenio (Avignon), the town of, 2. 

Avernians, the, 9, 10, 11. 

Avignon, chosen as the Papal residence 

by Clement V., 130. 
Aydie, Odet d', and Louis XI. 213. 

B. 
Baldwin III., King of Jerusalem, and 

Louis VIL, 82. 
Baliie, Cardinal de la, 211. 
Balzac, 363. 
Barbarigo, Doge of Venice, and Charles 

VIII., 222. 
Barbarities of the early French Kings, 

34.. 
Barbarossa, Frederic, 85. 
Barbezieux, 406. 
Barbier, Advocate, 492, 506. 
Barfleur taken by Edward III., 146. 
Barri, Godfrey de, Lord of Eenaudie, 

289. 
Barricades in Paris in 1648, 369. 
Bart, John, a corsair of Dunkerque, ex- 
ploits of 381. 
Bartholomew, St., the Massacre of, events 

which led to, 300; commencement of 

the Massacre of, by the murder of 

Admiral Ooligny, 301. 
Basques, the, 2. 

Bastille, the, begun by Charles V., 171- 
Baudricourt and Joan of Arc, 186. 
Bavaria, the Duke of, asked to give his 

daughter Isabel in marriage to Charles, 

173. 
, Judith of, becomes the wife of 

Louis the Debonnair, 55. 

-, the Elector of, and the battle 



of Blenheim, 389, claims to the Empire, 
469 ; made lieutenant-general of the 
armies of France, 470 ; proclaimed 
Emperor as Charles VII., 471. 

Bavarians, the, 43. 

Baville, Lamoignon de, 412 

Bayard, Peter du Terrail, the Chevalier 
de, knights Francis I., 244; wounded 
near Romagnano; deathof that "gentle 
knight, well-beloved of every one," 
252. 

Bayonne, loss of, by the English after 
holding it for three centuries, 194. 

Bazin, Thomas, quoted, 195. 

Beachy Head, naval engagement oflF, in 
which the English and Dutch are de- 
feated by the French under Tourville, 
385. 

Beaujeu, Anne de, government of, 218. 

Beaumarchais. aids the Americans against 
England, 541. 

Mariage de Figaro, 554. 

Beaumont, Christopher de, Archbishop of 
Paris, 497. 



Beauvais, siege of, by Charles the Kash, 
206. 

, the Bishop of, and the trial of 

Joan of Arc, 190. 

, Vincent of, writings of, 264. 

Beauvilliers, the Duke of, 416. 

Beda, Noel, denounced by Erasmus. 272. 

Bedford, the Duke of, regent of France, 
18 i ; and Joan of Arc, 421 ; lin.s King 
Henry VI. crowned at Paris, 1431, 
191. 

Belgian province, the, of Roman Gaul, 17. 

Belgians, the, 1. 

Belle-Isle, Count, character of 469. 

, Marshal, coldly received at 

Paris, 478 ; and the Italian campaign 
of 1745, 474; death of, 500 

Belleville, Joan of, wife of Oliver de 
Clisson, revenges her husband's death, 
145. 

Belzunce, Monseigneur de, heroic self- 
sacrifice and benevolence of, during the 
time of the Plague in Marseilles, 459. 

Benedict XI., Pope, and Philip IV.. of 
France, 130 

Benefices, 39. 

Bentinck, Earl of Portland, 386. 

Beranger, Raymond, Count of Provence, 
gives his daughter Marguerite in mar- 
riage to Louis IX., 113. 

Berbers, the, or Moors, 44. 

Berengaria of Navarre, married to Ri- 
chard Cceur de Lion at Cyprus. 86. 

Bergen-op-Zoom, captured l747, 479. 

Bergerac, the Peace of, in 1577, 309. 

Berlin, captured and pillaged by the 
Russian s, 502. 

Bernard, St., 81 ; death of, 84 ; and Ah6. 
lard, 103 ; in concert with Cardinal 
Alberic, preaches against the heretics 
in the Countship of Toulouse, 105. 

, Duke, of Saxe- Weimar, 357, 

358. 

Beruis, Abbe de, 496; dismissed by Louis 
XV., 500. 

Berquin, Louis de, burnt as a heretic, 
272. 

Bertrand du Guesclin, 164, 169. 

Berry, the Duke of, and Charles VI, 
174. 

the Duchess of, death of, 459. 

B/rulle, Cardinal, 350. 

Berwick, Marshal, and Philip V. of Spain, 
390; gains the victory of Alinaiiza, 
390 ; commences the campjiign of 1734 
against Austria, aiid is killed, 466. 

Beziers, capture of, 106. 

Bibracte (Aurun), the town of 3. 

Biron, Marshal de, conspiracy against 
Henry IV., S-H. 

Black Plague, the, 1347—1349, 149. 

Blanche, Queen, of Castillo, aids >her 



588 



History of France. 



husband, Prince Louis, in his expe- 
dition against England, 108 ; character 
of, 112 ; mother of 8t. Louis, 111. 

Blenheim, the battle of, 1704, 189. 

Blois, Charles of, war with John of Mont- 
fort, 143. 

Treaty of, between Louis XII. and 

Venice, 235. 

Boileau, 430. 

, Stephen, Provost of Paris, 117. 

Bolingbroke, Lord, (see also Si. John), 
and Voltaire, 516. 

Bologna, meeting of Francis I and Pope 
Leo II , 245; siege of, raised by Gaston 
de Foix, 233. 

Boniface VIII., Pope, St. Louis, claims 
temporal as well as spiritual power 
in the aflFairs of Christendom, 126, 127 ; 
and his Bull, " Hearhen, most dear 
Son," 128 ; narrow escape of, death 
of, 130. 

Bonifacius, Eoman General, 27. 

Bonnivet, Admiral, entrusted by Francis 
I. with the conduct' of the war in Italy, 
251. 

Bordeaux, loss of, by the English, 1451, 
194; retaken by Lord Talbot, 195; reyolt 
of, against the Salt Tax, 1548, 277. 

Borgia, Caesar, 222. 

Bossuet, and the works of Madame 
Guy on, 417; and Fenelon, 417; head 
of the great French Catholic Party, 
421 ; and the Bevocation of the Edict of 
Nantes, 418 ; death of, 422. 

Bouchain, captured by Villars and the 
French, 397- 

Boucicaut, Marshal de, 178. 

Boufflera, Marshal, 386, 388 ; defends 
Lille against Marlborough and Eugene, 
391 ; at Malplaquet, 393. 

Bougainville, M. de, world circumnaviga- 
tor, 554. 

Bouillon, the Duke of, arrested for con- 
spiring with Cinq Mars, 343. 

Bourbon, Francis of. See Count d'En- 
gJiien. 

, Charles, Duke of, and Francis I., 

245. 

, Charles II., Duke of, revolt of, 

250; interview with Bayard, 252; lays 
siege to Marseilles, 253 ; is repulsed, 
and has to fall back on Italy, 254 ; 
leaves the Impeiial army in Italy and 
raises an army in Germany, 255 ; killed 
at the storming of Eome, 1527, 259. 

■ , the Constable de. See Chwrles II. 

of Bourhon. 

— — — , Louis de. See Prince Louis de 
Condi. 

— — — , Henry de, son of Prince Louis de 
Conde. See Hewy de Condi. 

-^ — - — , Cardinal Charles de, 317. 



Bourbon, the Duke of, and the legitimized 

princes, 453. 

, French colony, 482. 

Bourdaloue, Father, death and character 

of, 422. 
Bourges besieged by the Burgundians, 

178. _ 
Bonteville, M. de, executed for duelling, 

341. 
Bouvines, battle of, won by the French 

under Philip IL, 101. 
Boyne, battle of the, 385. 
Brabant, the Duke of, kil ed at Agin- 

court, 179. 
Breda, Peace of, between England and 

Holland, 377. 
Brenn (the Brennus of the Greeks and 

Latins), the great Gallic chieftain, 4. 
Brescia captured by Gaston de Foix, 

233. 
Bretigny, the Treaty of, between the 

English and French, 1360, 160. 
Breze, Peter de, seneschal of Louis XL, 

203. 

, Sirede, 250. 

Bri9onnet, William, 271. 
Brienne and Louis XIV., 375. 

, Lom^nie de, 555. 

Brissac, Charles de 327. 
Brittany, the Parliament of, 494. 

, John III. of, 143. 

, Arthur of, 100. 

, Francis II. of, and Louis XL, 

204, 208. 
, Anne of, wife of Louis XII., 

239. 
Broglie, Marshal, 472. 
, the Duke of, defeated at Minden, 

502. 
Broussel, arrest of, 369. 
Broye, castle of, 147. 
Bructerians, the, 27. 
Brunehaut, Queen, 35. 
Brunswick, Grand Duke Ferdinand of, 

defeats Count Clermont at Crevelt, 

500, defeats the French at Minden, 

502. 
Brussels captured by Marshal Saxe, 

476. 
Bude (or Budseus), 273. 
BuflFon, 523—525. 
, Count de, death of, in the Ee« 

volution, 525. 
Burgundy, kingdom of, 33. 
and Edward III. of England, 

159 ; taken possession of by John IL, 

161 ; the Dukes of, and Charles VI., 

175, 176, 177. 
, Philip the Bold, Duke of, and 

Charles VI., 176, 177. 
, Duke John the Fearless of, 

murders the Duke of Orleans, 176 ; 



Index. 



589 



retnms, and becomes master of Paris, 
180 ; death of, 181. 

Burgundy, Charles the Rash, Duke of 
Burgundy, and Louis XI., 205 5 a-id 
the siege of Beauvais, 206 ; and the 
English in Prance, 207 ; defeated by 
the Swiss at Morat, 209 ; defeated and 
killed at the battle of Nancy, 210. 

, the Duke of, takes command of 

the French army in Flanders, 384 ; 
death of, 394. 

, the Duchess of, and Louis XIV., 

439 ; death of, 440 

Burgundians, the, 16; and Armagnacs, 
civil war between the, 177 j obtain pos- 
session of Paris, 180. 

Bussy, M. de, 484—486. 

Butchers, the, of Paris, 177. 

Bute, Lot d, and Mr. Pitt, 503 ; demands 
the destruction of Dunkerque, 504. 

Byzantium in danger from the Crusaders, 
81. 

0. 

Cabellio (Caraillon), the town of, 2. 

Caen taken by Edward III., 146. 

Caesar Borgia, 222. 

, Julius, and the conquest of Ganl, 

10, defeats the Helvetians, B.C. 58, 12 ; 
begins his conquest of Gaul, 9 ; defeats 
the Germans who had invaded Gaul 
under Ariovistus, 10 ; character of, 13 ; 
defeats the Gauls under Vercingetorix, 
14 ; encloses eighty thousand Gallic in- 
surgents under Vercingetorix in the 
town of Alesia, 16. 

Calais, siege of, by Edward III., 147, 148, 
captured from the English by Duke de 
Guise, 1558, 281 ; and the treaty of 
Cateau-Cambresis, 282. 

Calas, 520 ; the persecution of the, and 
Voltaire, 463. 

Caligula, government of, 18. 

Calixtus III., Pope, rehabilitates Joan of 
Arc, 191. 

Calonne, M. de, made comptroller-general 
by Louis XVI., 551 ; extiavagant mea- 
sures of, 553 ; proposes to convoke the 
Assembly of Notables, 555. 

Calvin, 274, 275; Christian Institutes, 
274. 

Calvinists, the, and Henry IV., 322, 323. 

Cambrai, the League of, 230 ; the Peace 
of, 1529, 260; captured, 381. 

Camisards, revolt of the, 412, 413. 

Canada, early French settlements in, 
488 ; and the Treaty of Utrecht, 491 ; 
abandoned by France, 493. 

Canadians, the French, 491; character of, 
492 ; devotion and courage of, 491. 

Canals, the, of Languedoc and Orleans, 
402. 



Cape Breton, captured by the English, 
1745, 492. 

Capet, Hugh, 62; and Feudal France, 
63 ; has his son Eobert crowned with 
him, death of, a.d. 996, 63. 

Capitularies, the, of Charlemiigne and the 
Prankish Kings, 48, 49. 

Capponi, Peter, and Charles VIII , 223. 

Captal of Buch, capture of, 164, 166. 

Carcassonne, 105. 

Carloman, son of Pepin the Short, 42, 43. 

Carlovingian line, fall of the, a.d. 937, 
57. 

Carnatic, the, 484. 

Cartier, James, 489. 

Cassel, 172. 

Castelnaudary, battle of, 343. 

Castillon, death of Lord Talbot and his 
son at the siege of, 195. 

Castries, Marshal de, 502, 548. 

Cateau-Cambresis, Treaty of, 1559, 281. 

Catherine de Medici. See Medici. 

, Princess, daughter of Charles 

VI., offered in marriage to Henry V. of 
England, 182. 

II. of Russia, 504, 505; and 

Voltaire, 521. 

Catholics, the, and the Edict of Nantes, 
323. 

Catinat, 385, 386, 387. 

Cattians, the, a tribe of the Franks, 27. 

Cauchon, Peter, Bishop of Beauvais, and 
Joan of Arc, 189. 

Cavalier, the Camisard, 413. 

Cellamare's conspiracy 453, 454. 

Celts, tiie, 2. 

Ceresole, victory of the French over the 
Imperial forces at, 1544, 262. 

Cerignola, battle of, between the French 
and Spaniards, 1503, 228. 

Cevennes, ruins in the, 413. 

Chabannes, Philip of. Count de Damp- 
martin. See Dampmartin. 

Chalais, Count of, 341. 

Chalons, the battle of, between the Franks 
and Huns, in which the latter are de- 
feated, 28. 

Chalotais, M. de la, 506, 507. 

Chamavians, the, a tribe of the Franks, 27. 

Chamillard, 388, 392, 406. 

Champagne, Philip of, 435. 

Champeaux, William of, 265. 

Champlaiu, Samuel do, 489, 490. 

Chandernugger, French colouy, 485 ; re- 
stored to the French, 493. 

Chandos, John, leader of the English at 
the battle of Auray, 104; defeats Gues- 
clin, 166; and the Prince of Wales 
enter Spain with an army of 27,000 
men, 167. 

Charario, king of the Terouanne Franks, 
82. 



590 



History of France. 



Charibert of Paris, 33. 

Charlemagne, 42-; sole king of the Gallo- 
Franco-Germanic Monarchy, a.d. 771, 
43 ; summary of the wars of, 43 ; in- 
vades Lombardy, 44; enters Rome, 
A.D. 774, 46 ; invades Spain, 44 ; and 
his government, 46 ; his missi dominici 
or chief agents of government, 47 ; Ca- 
pitularies, 48 ; great men of the reign 
of, 49; forms a school of the palace, 
50 ; death of, on Jan. 28, 814, 51. 

Charles of Austria and Francis I., com- 
mencement of the stmggle between ; 
elected Emperor of Germany as Charles 
T. at the Diet of Frankfort, 1519, 
248. 



yi. of Austria, 390. 

of Blois, 143, 144. 

the Bad. See Navarre. 

— the Bald, son of Louis the De- 

bonnair, born, 56. 

of Burgundy. See Burgundy. 

the Daliphin re enters Paris, 



153. 



Edward, Prince, expelled from 



France, 479. 

the Fat, 53, 58, 62. 



— , son of Pepin the Short, 42. 

— the Rash. See Buraundy. 

— the Simple, a.d. 898", 54. 

— I. of England and Henrietta of 



France, 353. 

II. of England and Louis XIV., 

secret alliance between, 378. 

■ II. of Spain and the claimants 

to his kingdom, 387. p 

III. of Spain and Louis XV., 

treaty between, 1761, 503. 

IV., called the Handsome, 152. 

■ V. of France, 162; the Fifth's 

brothers and sisters, 163 ; government 
of, 163, 169, commands Edward the 
Black Prince to come to Paris; the 
Prince's answer, 167; death of, 1380, 
170 ; character of, 170, 171. 

v., Emperor of Germany, and 

Francis 1 , 248 ; and the commence- 
ment of the war with France, 249; and 
Charles II of Bourbon, 250; and his 
prisoner Fiancis I., 266; demands the 
Duchy of Burgundy of Francis I., 
258 ; and the Holy League, 259 ; and 
the ti'eaty of Cambrai, 260 ; enters 
Provci.ce with 50,000 men in 1536, 
261 ; and Francis I., treaty and meet- 
ing between, 1538, 261 ; and Henry 
VIII. of England, treaty between, 1543, 
262 ; and Francis I., renewal of war 
qetween, 1542 — 1544, 262 ; invades 
France, and forces terms on Francis I., 
263 ; and the Protestant Princes of 
Germany, 273 ; at the siege of Meat, 



279 ; captures Therouanne, 280 ; ab- 
die ition of, 280 ; and the capture of 
Saint Quentin, 281. 

Charles VI. and the Duke of Burgandy, 
171 ; minority, 171 ; of France invades 
Flanders, 172 ; enters Paris, 172 ; and 
the Princess Isabel of Bavaria, 173 ; 
character of, 184 ; mental derangement 
of, 174 ; mad freaks of, 174 ; and the 
civil war between the Armagnacs and 
Burgundians, 177 ; and Odette, 174 ; 
by the treaty of Troyes, leaves the 
crown of France to Henry V. of England, 
182; death of, 184. 

VII,, 184; youth of, 185; first 

hears of Joan of Arc, 186 ; and Joan of 
Arc, 187 ; coronation of, at Rheims, 
188 ; remorse for the death of Joan of 
Arc, 190 ; convokes the States-General 
at Tours to ratify the peace with Bur- 
gundy, 193 ; and the Constable De 
Richemont, 196 ; re-enters Paris Nov. 
12th, 1437, 192 ; besieges Montereau in 
person, and is one of the first assailants 
to penetrate into the place, 192 ; expe- 
dition against Aquitaine, 194 ; renews 
the war with England, 1449, 194, 195 ; 
renders tardy homage to the memory 
and fame of Joan of A.rc, 196 ; and 
Jacques Coeur, 196; character of, 197 
and the Pragmatic Sanction, 199 
troubles with his son, 199 ; death of 200. 

Emperor, 397 ; death of, 469. 

VIIL, 217; and the States- 

General of 1484, 218 ; and Duke Louis 
of Orleans, 219 ; marriage of, with 
Anne of Brittany, 210 ; prepares to win 
ba^k the kingdom of Naples, 221 ; 
enters Italy, 222 ; and Pope Alexander 
VI., 223 ; enters Rome 1495, and 
Naples, 223 ; league of the Italian 
Princes against, 224 ; starts to return 
to France ; wins the battle of Foruovo 
and returns to France, 224 ; govern- 
ment of, death of, 225, Commynes' 
character of, 226. 

• IX. and the religious wars, 1560 

— 1574, accession of, 291 ; and the St. 
Bartholomew, 301 ; and the battle of 
Dreux, 294 ; and the Huguenots, 
296; and the marriage of Marguerite 
de Valois and the Prince of Navarre, 
299; and Coligny, 299; the Guises 
and Coligny, 300 ; and the murder of 
Coligny, 301 ; and Michel de I'Hospital, 
292 ; excuses for the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, 301 ; and the fourth 
religious war, 304; and the peace 
of La Rochelle, 305; death of, 1574, 
305. 

Charolais, Count Charles of, 202; and 
Louis XI., 203. 



Index. 



591 



Chartier'a Alan, Quach-iloge invectif, 809 
poet, 183. 

Cliastel, John, attempts to miirder Henry 
IV., 328. 

Chateauroux, tlie Duchesa of, and Louis 
XV., 474. 

Ciiatelet, Madame du, and Voltaire, 
517. 

Chatham, Lord, (see also Pitt), 500, 

603. 

Chatillon, Madame de, 242. 

Chaucians, the, a tribe of the Franks, 
27. 

Chauvelin, 467. 

Chavigny, 366. 

Cherbourg taken by Edward III., 146. 

Cheruscans, the, a tribe of the Franks, 
27. 

Chevert, 471. 

Chevreuse, the Duke of, 416. 

Childebert of Paris, 33. 

Ill , 36. 

Childeric, King of the Franks ; 83, 
36. 

Chilperic of Soissons, 38. 

Chivemy, Chancellor de, 326. 

Choisoul, the Duke of, Ministry of, 500 ; 
attempt to invade England defeated, 
501 ; and the Family Pact, 503 ; dis- 
missed by Louis XV., 507} his attempts 
to obtain colonies for France, 501 ; and 
the Polish insurrection, 511; and the 
approaching rupture between England 
and the American colonies, 510. 

Christian zeal superior to pagan persecu- 
tion, 25. 

Christianity, establishment of, in Gaul, 
25 ; rise of, 24 ; peculiar and glorious 
characteristic of, 25 ; influence of, on 
the order of knighthood, and, through 
it, on civilization in general, 66. 

Christians, persecution of, by Marcus 
Aurelius, a.d. 177, 25 ; the, expected 
the end of the world a.d 1000, 66; 
and the Holy Land, 74; persecuted, 
77. 

Church and State in the time of Louis 
XIII. and Richelieu, 350. 

Cimbriaus, or Kymrians, the, and the 
Teutons driven from their homes on 
the shores of the Baltic by an earth- 
quake and inundations, spread south- 
wards over Europe and threaten Gaul 
and Italy, 113, B.C., 9; invade Gaul by 
way of Belgica, 110 B.C., 9. 

Cinq- Mars, M. de, favourite of Louis 
XIII., 343 ; imprisonment of, 344 ; 
condemned to death and threatened 
with torture, 344. 

Cisalpine Gaul, 7. 

Citeaux, twelve abbots and twenty monks 
of Citeaux disperse themselves in all 



directions, preacUngthe crusade against 

the Albigensians, 105. 
Civilization, progress of, in the time of 

Louis XL, 215. 
Civita Vecchia provisionally given up to 

Charles VIII., 223. 
Claude, the Princess, of Prance, daughter 

of Louis XII., and Charles of Austria, 

228. 
Claudius, policy of, in Gaul, 18. 
Clement, James, stabs King Henry III., 

315. 
v., Pope, and Philip IV., 130 ; 

abolishes the order of the Templars, 

130 ; death of, 131. 

VII., Pope, 260. 

VIII., Pope, 322; and Henry 

IV., 543; absolves Henry IV., 328; 

annuls the marriage of Henry IV. with 

Marguerite of Valois, 338. 
Clermont, grand Council at, in 1095, 

under Pope Urban II., 74. 
, Count, beaten at Crevelt, 

500. 
Clisson, Oliver de, attempted assassi- 
nation of, 173. 
Clive " a heaven-bom general," 483 ; hia 

early successes against the French and 

their Indian allies, returns to India 

and conquers Bengal, 484. 
Clodomir of Orleans, 38. 
Cluster- Severn, the convention of, 1757| 

498. 
Clotaire I. of Soissons, 88. 
II. of Soissons murders his nephew, 

33. 
Clovis, King of the Salian Franks, 29 ; 

and Clotilde, marriage of 29 ; at the 

battle of Tolbiac, 30 ; baptism of, 30 ; 

makes Paris the centre of his dominions, 

82 ; death of, in a.d. 511, 32. 
Clovis III., 37. 
Code Michaii,, 349. 
Coettier, James, 214. 
Cceur de Lion, Richard, in the Holy Land, 

85, 86, 87. 
, Jacques, a great merchant and 

statesman, 196, 197. 
Cognac, Francis I at, in 1527, 257. 
Coigny, Marshal, 467. 
Colbert, M., 876; and Lonia XIV. 399; 

able administration of, 400, 402 ; 

literary taste and work of, 43 i. 
Coligny, Admiral de, and the Refer- 

mation, 294, 296 ; influence with 

Charles IX., 299; attempted murder of, 

300, .301, 431; and the early French 

Settlements in America, 488. 
College Royal, the, 268. 
Colonna, Sciarm, and Pope Boniface 

VIII., 129. 
Colonna, Prosper, 249. 



592 



History of France. 



Common weal, war of the, against Louis 
XI., 202. 

Comnmnes, tlie, and tlie Third Estate, 
134; rise of the, 135 ; Roman traditions 
and Christian sentiments had their 
share in the formation of the, 135, 
136. 

Commynes, Philip de, quoted, 202, 205, 
206, 211, 216 ; and Louis XI., 218, 
216 ; character and works of, 267. 

Compagnie des Indes, Law's, 451. 

Concini, Concino, 337 ; see Marshal 
d'Ancre. 

Concordat, the, between Pope Leo X and 
Francis I., 247. 

Conde, Prince Louis de, 283, 289, 290; 
295, 297 ; and the Reformation, and 
the Guises, 287 ; trial of, sentenced to 
death, set at liberty, 291 ; taken 
prisoner at Dreux, 294 ; death of, at 
Jarnac, 298. 

■ , the Duke of Enghien, Prince of, 

at the, 367 ; and the Erondeurs, 369- 
371 ; arrested, 370 ; taken back to 
favour by Louis XIV., and restored to 
all his honours, 374 ; placed by Louis 
XIV. in command of the army to be 
employed in the reduction of the 
Netherlands, commands the French 
army in Holland, 378, 379; gains the 
bloody battle of SenefFe over the Prince 
of Orange, 1674, 380 ; and Bossuet, 
421 ; and Moliere, 432, 433. 

Conflans, Lord de, assassinated, 154. 

, the Marquis of, defeated by 

Admiral Hawke, 501. 

-, treaty of, between Louis XL 



and the Count of Charolais, 203. 

Conquest of England by the Normans, 70- 
73. 

III., Emperor of Germany, 

arrives at the Holy City almost alone, 
82. 

Constantine, the Emperor, 26. 

Constantinople, in danger from the Cru- 
saders, 81 ; perils of the Latin empire 
of, in the 13th century, 88. 

Contades, the Marquis of, 500. 

Conti, the Prince of, 369, 370. 

Cook, Captain, and the generous attitude 
of the French towards his mission, 
554. 

Coote, Colonel, captures Bussy, 486; cap- 
tures Pondicheny, 487. 

Corneille, Peter, 364 ; and Richelieu, 
865 ; his Cid, 365, 366 ; works of, 428, 

. 429. 

Cornwallis, Lord, forced to capitulate to 
Washington, 394. 

Corsica, and Pascal Paoli, 510. 

Cosse, Marshal de, 301, 327. 

Council of Clermont, 74. 



Courtrai, battle of, in whicli the French 
are defeated by the Flemings, 124. 

Coustou, 533. 

Coysevox, 435. 

Craon, Peter de, 173. 

Crecy, arrival of the English under Edward 
III., 146 ; commencement of the battle 
of, 147. 

Crequi, Marshal de, subdues Lorraine, 
382. 

Crespy, the peace of, 263, 

Crevelt, battle of, 500. 

Cromwell, Oliver, and Mazarin, treaty 
between, and English aid to France, 
878. 

Crusade, the, of Godfrey de Bouillon, 74— 
77 ; the four leaders of the first great, 
77 ; of Richard Cceur de Lion, Philip 
Augustus of France, and Fredric Bar- 
barossa of Germany, 85 ; end of the 
third great, 87 ; the sixth, the personal 
achievement of St. Louis, 88 ; of St. 
Louis, end of, 95. 

Crusaders, ravages of the early, 77; and 
Saladin, 80, 85 

Crusades, the, their origin and their 
success, 75 ; mostly from France, Eng- 
land, and Italy, 80. 

Culloden, battle of, 477. 

D. 

Dagobert I., 35. 

III., 37. 

D'Aguesseau, character of; appointed 
chancellor, 449. 

D'Aiguillon, the Duke of, 507. 

D'Albret, the Constable, killed at A gin- 
court, 179. 

D'Alembert, 522, 

Damiens attemps to assassinate Louis 
XV., 496. 

Damietta captured by St. Louis, 90. 

Dampierre, Guy de. Count of Flanders, 
his challenge to Philip IV., 123 ; death 
of, in the prison of Compiegne, 124. 

Dampmartin, Count de, 213, 

Damville, Marshal de, 301. 

D'Andelot, 297. 

Danes, (Danesiiis), 268. 

Dantzick, siege of, 465, 466. 

D'Argenson, M., quoted, 464. 

D'j^.sfeldt, Count, and the campaign of 
1734, 466. 

D' Aubigne, Theodore Agrippa, 290 ; cha- 
racter of, 332, 333. 

Daun, General, defeats the Prussians at 
Hochkirch, 500. 

Dauphin, the, and Edward III , and the 
English, 158. 

■ , the, son of Charles VI., assumes 

the title of Regent, 175; treaty between, 
and John, Duke of Burgundy, 177. 



Index. 



593 



Daupliin, the, son of Louis XV., character 
and death of, 509. 

Dauphiny, the parliament of, 558. 

Deconing, Peter, leader of the revolt of 
the Flemings, 124. 

De Cosse, Marshal de, 301, 327. 

Decius, the Roman Emperor, 20. 

D' Emery, 368. 

Deffand, Madame du, 526. 

De Luynes, Constable, 339, 340. 

Denain, captured by Villars and the 
French, 396 ; efifects of the battle of, 
397. 

Denis, Saint, C-5. 

D'Epernon, 317. 

De Richemont, the Constable, his cha- 
racter and part in the successes of 
France at the close of the 100 years' 
war, 195, 196. 

Descartes, Rene, life, character, and works 
of, 361. 

Desmarets, 401. 

Despreaux, M. See Boileau. 

De Thou, 307. 

Dettingen, the battle of, 473. 

Diderot, 521, 523. 

Didier, King of Lombardy, 44. 

Diocletian, 25. 

Dives, the town of, Duke William of Nor- 
mandy' s rendezvous for his troops and 
ships, meant for the invasion of Eng- 
land, 69. 

Divitiacus, 10. 

Domremy, native place of Joan of Arc, 186. 

Dormans, William de, minister of Charles 
v., 163. 

D'Orte, Viscount, 303. 

Doryleum, the Saracens defeated at, by 
the Crusaders, 77. 

Douai, captured by Villars and the French, 
397. 

Drenx, results of the battle of, 294. 

Dreux-Breze, the Marquis of, 564. 

Druids, persecution of, by Claudius, 18. 

Druidism, the national religion of the 
Gauls, 23, 24. 

Dubarry, Madame, and Louis XV., 507; 
and the fall of the French Pai liament, 
508 ; growing contempt of her by the 
people, 509. 

Dabois, Abbe, character of, 454; and 
Lord Stanhope, 455 ; how he became 
Archbishop of Cansbrai, 458; elected 
Cardinal, 460 ; becomes premier Minis- 
ter of the Orleans regency ; death and 
character, 460 ; and the Protestants, 
463. 

Dubonrg, A. De, martyrdom of, 286. 

Duchatel, Tanneguy, leader of the Arma- 
gnacs, 180. 

Duclos, quoted, 217. 

Duels, severe ordinance against, 341. 



Dunkerqne, destruction of, demanded by 

Pitt, and by Lord Bute, 504. 
Dunois and the Maid of Orleans, 188. 
Dujileix, Joseph, 479-85. 
Duplessis Guenegaud and Louis XIV, 

375. 
Du Plessis-Momay, 332. 
Duprat, Anthony, and Francis T., 246 ; and 

the Concordat, 247, 248 ; death of, 

260. 
Duquesne and Admiral Ruyter, 381 ; 

bombards Algiers and Genoa, 383. 
Duras, Marshal, 385. 
Dutch, the, declare war against England, 

546. 



E. 



Eclase, defeat of the French fleet at, by 

Edward III. of England, 142. 
Ecouen, the edict of, 287. 
Edict Chamber, the, 329. 

of Nantes, the (see also Nante<), 

issued by Henry IV., 329 ; revoked by 
Louis XIV., 1685, 384, 409. 

of Grace, the, signed at Alais, 354. 

of Union, the, 368. 

of 1724, the, against the Protes- 
tants, 463. 

Edward the Black Prince, death and 
character of, 168. 

I. of England receives Agenois of 

Philip III. of France, 122 ; swears 
fealty at Paris to Philip IV. of France, 
124. 

III. of England, 142 ; and Robert 



of Artois, 143; declares war with Philip 
VI. of France on August 21st, 1337, 
143 ; commences war with Fiance, 
142 ; and the English before the 
battle of Cr^cy, 146; and the Burghers 
of Calais, 147 ; and John II. of Prance, 
151 ; and his prisoner. King John of 
France, 153 ; again invades France, 
146; declares war with Charles V., 167; 
death of, 168. 
• IV. of England's claims on 



France, 207. 

Eginhard, quoted, 43 46. 

, biographer of Charlemagne, 46. 

Ehresburg, castle of, 43. 

Elizabeth, Queen of England, and the 
treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, 281 ; and 
the French Protestants, 304; death and 
character of, 330. 

, Madame, and Marie Antoinette, 

552 

EmporisB (Ampurias, in Catalonia), found- 
ing of, 2. 

Encyclopaedists, the, 521, 522. 

Enghien, Francis of Bourbon, Count d', 
262. 



594 



History of France. 



Enghien, the Duke of, and the relief of 
Kocroi, 367. 

England, conquest of, by William the 
Bastard, 1066, 66-72; its influence on 
France, 123. 

and the Normans, 66 ; invaded 

by the Normans, 70 ; and France, ori- 
gin of the rivalry between, 123 ; and 
Flanders in the 13th century, 123 ; and 
France, origin of the Hundred Years' 
War between, 142 ; and continental 
aflfairs, 1509, 230 ; and France, out- 
break of war between, in 1512, 234 ; 
and the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
304 ; and the revolt of La Eochelle, 
353 ; and Hollaud, alliance between, at 
the marriage of William of Orange and 
the Priacess Mary, 1677, 381; and 
France declare war with Spain, 1719, 
458 ; and the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
1748, 479 ; rise of her power in America, 
Rnd decline of that of France, 49.'. ; and 
France, war betM een, in 1756, 495 ; 
French attempt to invade, in 1759, de- 
feated by Admiral Hawke, 501 ; de- 
clares war with Spain, 1762, 504; and 
the partition of Poland, 1772, 503 ; and 
the American War of Independence, 
540 et seq.; and France, commencement 
of war between, 1778, 543 ; thi'eatened 
invasion of, by France and Spain, 544 ; 
at war with France, Spain, and Ame- 
rica, declares war against Holland, 546. 

English, the, and Marcel, 157 ; defeated 
by Joan of Arc, raise the siege of 
Orleans, 188 ; evacuate Paris, 192 ; and 
France under Louis XL, 206 ; invade 
France under Henry VIII. , and take 
Boulogne, 263 ; and Philip II. of Spain 
invade France expedition; agT,inst La 
Eochelle defeated, 353 ; and the battle 
of Fontenoy, 475. 

ftpernon, the Duke of, 317, 335. 

£pinay, Madame d', and Eousseau, 
528. 

Erasmus, quoted, 272 ; denounces Noel 
Beda, 272. 

Erigena, John Scot, 265. 

Escurial, the, 330. 

Espremesnil, M. d', 556, 557. 

Estates- General, assembled at Paris, 129. 
See States- General. 

, the three, of 1468, 204. 

Estaing, Count d', commands the French 
fleet sent to aid the Americans, 543, 
5t4. 

Estolle, SheriS", and the Plague in Mar- 
seilles, 459. 

Estienne, Robert (Stephanus), 268. 

Estrees, Gaorielle d', 333. 

■ , Marshal d', commander of the 

French army at the commencement of 



the Seven Tears' War, repulses the 

Duke of Cumberland, 497. 
Etablissements de St. Louis, the, 

116. 
Etruria, Tuscany, ravaged by the Gauls, 

587—581 B.C., 6, 
Eudes, Duke of Aquitania, 37. 
, Count of Paris, defends Paris 

against the Northmen, 53. 
Eugene, Prince, of Savoy-Carignano, 388 ; 

and Marlborough, 388 ; and Villeroi, 

389; and the battle of Malplaquet, 393; 

and the Peace of Utrecht, 397 ; arid the 

campaign of 1734, 466. 
Europe, trade of, in the 13th century, 

principally carried on by Flanders, 123; 

coalition of, against Prance under Loiois 

XIV., 389. 
Euthymenes, the explorer, 2. 



F. 

Fagon, 437. 

Family Pact, the, between France and 
Spain, 1761, 503. 

Farce of Patelin, the, 267. 

Farel, William, 270. 

Farnese, Alexander. See Parma. 

Fenelon, Bossuet, and Madame Guyon, 
416 ; his work on the Inner Life, 417 ; 
birth of, 1651, and early life of, 423 ; 
made preceptor of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, his TeUmaque, 423 ; death and 
character of, 424 ; Pascal, and Bossuet, 
424. 

Ferdinand, the Catholic, of Spain and 
Louis XIL, 240. 

II. of Naples and Charles VIII , 

223 ; energy of, 225. 

Feria, Duke of, leaves Paris with the 

Spanish troops, 327. 
Feudal France and Hugh Capet, 62, 

System, the essential elements of 

the, 59 ; considered by the mass of 
the population a foe to be fought, and 
fought down at any cost, 59, 60. 

Society and Louis XL, 202. 



Feudalism in Prance, 65. 

Fiefs, the owners of, and their mutual 
relations considered, 60. 

Field of the Cloth of Gold, 248. 

Flanders, commercial relations of, with 
England, 123 ; submits to Philip IV., 
125; under Count Louis de Nevers, 142; 
and the threatening 100 years' war 
between France and England, 142; and 
Charles IX. of France, 299; and Louis 
XIIL, 358. 

, Joan of, her intrepid defence of 

Hennebon Castle, 144. 

-, Louis, Cotmt of, and Charles VI., 



171, 172. 



Index. 



595 



Fleet, the Frencli, and Colbert, 402} under 
Louis XV., 495. 

Fleix, the Peace of, in 1580, 309. 

Fleurus, battle of, 1690, 385 

Fleury's, Cardinal, ministry, 1723 — 1748, 
464 ; commencement of his fostering 
administration, 464, 465; concludes the 
peace of Vienna, 1735, 467 ; and Chau- 
velin, 467 ; and the Parliament of Paris, 
468 ; and Count Belle-Isle, 469 j death 
and character of, 472. 

Fleury, M. Joly de. 529. 

Florence, the Eepublic of, and Charles 
VIII., 222. 

Floridas, the, confirmed to Spain, 493. 

Foix, Gaston de, Duke of Nemours, takes 
command of the French army in Italy, 

1512, 233 ; death of, at the victory of 
Ravenna, 236. 

Fontaine, La (see also Jjo, Fontaine) , 431. 

Fontaine Franpaise, encoumer at, 328. 

Fontainebleau, Peace of, 1762, 504. 

Fontenelle, character and works of, 514. 

Fonteuoy, the battle of, 475. 

Fontrailles, Viscount de, 344. 

Formigny, the battle of, 1450, 193. 

Fornovo, the battle of, 1495, in which 
Charles VIIT. of France defeats the 
army of the Italian league, 224. 

Fouquet, Superintendent, and Louis XIV., 
376. 

and Moli^re, 432. 

Fourquet, Joan, 206. 

France, kingdom and history of, really 
commenced with Clovis, a.d. 481, 29 ; 
and England, origin of the "rivalry" 
between, 108 ; the kingship in, 65, 96 ; 
extent of the kingdom of, under Philip 
II., 97; and England, origin of the 
Hundred Years' War between, 141 ; 
sends an army to aid Sigismund against 
the Turks, which is destroyed, 175 ; 
condition of, in 1440, 185 ; and England, 
end of the Hundred Years' War be- 
tween, 195; under Charles VII., 197; 
and Austria, commencement of the 
rivalry between, 223 ; invaded, 251 ; 
and England, renewal of the war be- 
tween, 1512, 234 ; the situation of, in 

1513, 235; and the Renaissance, 264; 
in the Middle Ages, 265 ; and the nas- 
cent Reformation, 270 ; and the Treaty 
of Cateau-Cambresis, 281 ; state of, at 
the commencement of the reign of 
Henry III., 307 ; condition of, after 
Henry IV. 's abjuration, 327 ; and Eng- 
land, treaty between, in 1697, 386 ; and 
suflFerings of, during the reign of Louis 
XIV., 407 ; and England declare war 
with Spain, 1719, 458 ; and the treaty 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748, 479 ; inability 
of, to turn her discoveries in foreign 

Q 



lands to her own profit, 491 : leaves 
Canada to her fate, 493 ; position of at 
the end of the Seven Years' War, 510 ; 
and the partition of Poland, 1772, 510 ; 
the effects of Voltaire's writings on, 
521 ; and the American War of Inde- 
pendence, 540; and England and the 
American War of Independence, 541 ; 
recognizes the Independence of the 
United States, 1778, and declares war 
with England, 543 ; and the peace be- 
tween England and America. 1783, 549; 
on the eve of the Revolution, 556-560. 
Francis de Valois, Count of Angouleme, 

afterwards Francis I., 240. 
Francis I., 241 ; and Charles V., 218 ; the 
era of modern France commences with 
his government and times, 241 ; made 
king, 240 ; prepares to invade Italy, 
243 ; and his army cross the Alps, and 
the battle of Melegnano, 244 ; regains 
possession of Milaness, 250 ; Pope Leo 
X., the Praginatic Sanction, 246, 247 ; 
and the Concordat, and the Parliament 
of Paris' refusal to acknowledge the 
Concordat, 248 ; and the vacant throne 
of the Emperor Maximilian, 218; nnd 
Charles of Austria, commencement of 
the struggle between, 249 ; meets Henry 
VIIL of England at Tlie Field of the 
Cloth of Gold, 248 ; commences war 
with Charles V., 249 ; and Charles II. 
of Bourbon, 250 ; and the conspiracy 
of Charles II. of Bourbon, 250; entrusts 
the conduct of the war in Italy to 
Admiral Bonnivet, 251 ; loses Milaness 
for the third time, 252 ; advances to 
the relief of Marseilles, 253 ; enters 
Italy, 1524, 255 ; bravery and capture 
at the battle of Pavia. 255 ; his letters 
to his mother and to Charles V. after 
his defeat and capture at Pavia, 256 ; 
carried prisoner to Spain 257 ; refuses 
to accede to the terras of Charles V. of 
Germany, 258 ; set at liberty, enters 
into the Holy League, 259 ; and Henry 
VIII. of England renew their alliance, 
260 ; challenges Charles V. to mortal 
comlDat, 260 ; makes peace with Charles 
V. at Cambria, 260; and Duprat, 260; 
and Henry VIII., meeting and treaty 
between, 1532, 260; and Soliman II., 
treaty between, 262 ; and Charles V., 
war renewed between, from 1512 to 
1544', 262 ; forced to terms by Charles 
V. of Germany. 263; and tie Renais- 
sance, 264 ; and the CoWge Royal, or 
College de France, 268 ; Robert Es- 
tienne, and Marot, 268 ; as a poet, 
269; and the Reformation, 270; and 
the Reformers, 272 ; and the Protes- 
tants of Germany, 273 ; and the mas- 
Q 2 



59^ 



History of France. 



sacre of the Vaudians, 273, 274 ; and 
Calvin, 275 ; death of, 1547, 276 ; and 
the salt-tax at Eochelle, 277. 

Francis I., Emperor of Germany, 476. 

II. and Mary Stuart, marriage 

of, 280 ; ascends the throne, 285 ; and 
the r^efbrmers, 286, 287 ; and the Guises, 
286; and the King of Navarre, 288; 
death of, 290; death of, and the Guises, 
291. 

Franks, the, first mention of in history, 27. 

■' Freemen," or Franks, 27. 

Fredegonde. Queen, death of, 35. 

Frederick Barbarossa (Redbeard), joins 
in a new crusade, 85 ; drowned in the 
Selef on his way to the Holy Land, 85. 

■ II., emperor of Germany, his 

struggle with Popes Gregory IX. and 
Innocent IV., 88. 

III. of Naples, 225. 

the Great, 469 ; commences the 



Silesian campaign, 1740, 469 ; signs a 
new treaty with France, 1744, 470 ; 
and the battle of Fontenoy, 475 ; and 
Louis XV., 476 ; and the treaty of Aix- 
la-Chapelle, 479 ; England, and the 
Franco - Austrian Alliance, 496 ; vic- 
torious at Prague, and defeated at Kolin, 
497 ; reverses of, 498 ; gains the battle 
of Rosbach, 499 ; defeats the Austrians 
at Lissa, 499; gains the battle of Zorn- 
dorf, and loses that of Hochkirch, 500 ; 
reverses of, in 1760, 502 ; finds an ally 
in Peter III. of Russia, 504; and the 
end of the Seven Tears' War, 505 ; and 
the partition of Poland, 510 ; invites 
Voltaire to Berlin, 518. 

Frejus, the Bishop of, created Cardinal 
Fleury. See Fleury. 

French, the, rise out of and above the 
feudal system, 59; and English, com- 
mencement of hostilities between, in 
1292, 122; rejoicing of the, at the peace 
of Tours, 193. 

Communes, the, 134-136. 

. civilization. The Third Estate, the 

most active and determining element 
in the process of French civilization, 
138, 

nationality accomplished, 139. 

language, the, and the Renais- 



sance, 266. 

Academy, early days of the, 363 ; 



its rules of Election, 364 ; and Montes- 
quieu, 513; elects BufiFon, 525. 

Reformers, the, and Louis XIV., 



410. 



Court, demoralization of, under 

Louis XV., 461. 

enterprise in America, 488. 

pioneers, the earliest in North 

America, 488-490. 



French Guiana, 510. 

Freundsberg, George of, 259. 

Prisons, the, 43. 

Froissart, quoted, 147, 148, 154, 167; 

character and works of, 267. 
Fronde, the, 369 ; of the Princes of France 

and of the people, 371 ; the army of, 

fighting between, and the Royal troops, 

372 ; defeat of, 373, 
Frondeurs, the, 369. 
Furne-^, battle of, 124. 

G. 

Gabel, oi the salt-tax, 277. 

Gaeta, siege of, 1504, 228, 

Galatians, the, 5. 

Galigai, Leonora, 337. 

Gallia Comata, 7, 17. 
Togata, or Roman Gaul, 7, 17. 

Gallican Confession, the, 283. 

Gallo-Frankish vSociety, state of, in the 
eighth century, 39. 

Garonne, the river, 2. 

Gaston de Foix. See Fnix. 

Gaul, 1 ; conquered by Julius Caesar, 12- 
16 ; under Roman dominion, 16 ; its 
Roman rulers, from 49 B.C. — A.D. 305, 
16-26 ; divided into three provinces 
by Augustus, 17 ; under Augustus, 17 ; 
the sixty nations or peoplets of, recog- 
nized by Augustus, 17 ; under Caligula, 
Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, 17-19 ; the 
Germans in, 27 ; the Visigoths and 
Burgundians definitely settle in, A.D. 
412, 28. 

Gauls, the, 3; send representatives to 
Rome, 6 ; emigration of, 3 ; invade 
Germany, 4; invade Italy, B.C. 587, 4; 
invade Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, 
Greece, 4 ; defeated by King Antiochus 
of Syria, 5; pass into Asia Minor, 5; 
in Asia Minor become a people under 
the name of Galatians, defeated by 
Attalus, keep the Phrygians and Greeks 
of Asia Minor in subjection, 5 ; of Asia 
Minor encountered and defeated by the 
Romans in pursuit of Hannibal, B.C. 
189, 7 ; commence their 400 years' war 
with Rome, B.C. 391, 6; defeat the 
Romans at Aretium, 283 B.C., 6 ; under 
Hannibal, 7. 

Genoa, defence of, by the Duke of Bouflfters, 
478 ; cedes Corsica to France, 1768, 510. 

Genoese cross-bowmen, the, at Crecy, 147. 
George I. of England and Dubois, 456. 

II. of England and the Pragmatic 

Sanction, 470 ; and the war with France, 
1744, 472 ; death of, 1760, 502, 

III. of England, 502, 543, 546, 548, 



Geoffrin, Madame, 526. 

Gepidians, the, allies of the Huns, 28. 



Index. 



597 



Gterbert, secretary of Arcbbishop Adal- 
beroD, and afterwards Archbishop of 
Bheims aad Pope, 265. 

Germanicus, 18. 

Germans, the Ancient, 9, 10; in Gaul, 10; 
first become a nation, 27. 

Germany, joins in the Crusades, 80. 

Gesta, Dei 'per Fraitcos (the Crusades), 80 

Ghent, alliance at, in 1340, between the 
Flemish Com^ra^unes and Edward III. of 
England, 142; insurrection of the bur- 
ghers of, under Philip Van Artevelde, 
171 ; captured by Louis XtV., 391. 

Gibraltar, 548. 

Girardon, 435. 

Gliick, 533. 

Gnostics, the, 10 1. 

God's Peace, God's Truce, 64. 

"God willeth it!" war-cry of the early 
crusaders, 75. 

Godeau, Bishop of Grasse, 363. 

Godeheu, M., supersedes Dupleix, 484. 

Godfrey de Bouillon (see Bouillon), Duke 
of Lorraine, martial and noble character 
of, 77; accepts the oflB.ce of King of 
Jerusalem, 78. 

of Paris, quoted, 131. 

Godwin, Earl, 67. 

Golo, defeat of the Corsicans at, 231. 

Gondebaud, 30. 

Gondegisile, 30. 

Gondi, Paul de, afterwards Archbishop of 
Retz, 369. 

Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy, 33. 

Gonzalvo of Cordova, the great Captain of 
Ferdinand of Spain, 228. 

Goodfellows, the, 156. 

Gordes, the Count de, 303. 

Goths, the, 27 ; under Alaric IT., beaten 
by Clovis near Poitiers, a.d. 507, 31. 

Graeco-Romau Paganism, 24 

Grailli, John, de, called the Captal of 
Buch, 164, 166. 

Grand Alliance, the, against France and 
Louis XIV., 381, 389. 

Grand Company, the, and Bertrand Gues- 
clin, 165. 

Grand Monarque, 440- 

Grange, Joiin de la, minister of Charles 
v., 163. 

Granson, Charles the Rash of Burgundy 
defeated at, by the Sw^ss, 209 

Grasse, Count de, captures Tobago, and 
aids the Americans, 546. 

Great Britain and the American Declara- 
tion of Independence, 1776, 543. 

Mogul, the, 483. 

Greeks, the, 1. 

Gregory of Tours, historian, 31. 
VII., Pope, and the Crusades, 85. 

IX.. Pope, and Frederick 11. of 

Germany, 88. 



Gregory XIV., Pope, 319. 

Gretry, musician, 533. 

Greuze, painter, 532. 

Grignan, Madame de, and Madame de 
Sevigne, 424, 425. 

Grimaldi, Regnier de, a celebrated Italian 
admiral, employed by Philip IV. in his 
war with Flanders, 125. 

Grisons, the, 156. 

Guastalla, the battle of, 4^7. 

Guasto, Marquis de, 262. 

Guesclin, Bertrand du, 164 ; is set at 
liberty for a ransom, 166 ; is made 
Constable of France by Charles V , 
169 ; death of, 169. 

Guinegute, battle of, 236. 

Guise, 286. 

, the Cardinal of, death of, 313. 

, Francis de Lorraine, Duke of, 279 ; 

and the siege of Metz, 279 ; recalled 
from Italy by Henry II. to repel the 
Spaniards, 281 ; captures Calais, 282 ; 
Conde, 283 ; and the Huguenots of 
Vassy, 292 ; at the battle of Dreux, 
294; and Charles IX., 298 ; assassina- 
tion of, 294. 

, Duke Henry de, 308 ; obtains his 

name of The Scarred, whilst putting 
down the Protestant revolt, 308; be- 
comes master of Paris, 311 ; murdered 
by order of Henry IIL, 312. 

Guises, the, 286 ; cruelties of, 287, 289 ; 
and the death of Francis II., 290 ; and 
the Catholic party declare war against 
Conde and the Protestants, 292 ; and 
Coligny, 300; and the murder of Coligny, 
301 ; and Philip II. of Spain, 309. 

Guiton, John, burgess of La Kochelle at 
the time of the siege by Louis XIII., 
353. 

•Gustavus Adolphus and Richelieu, 356. 

Guyenne, the conquest of, 194, 195. 

Guyon, Madame, teachings and works of, 
416, 417. 

H. 

Hadrian, 19. 

Hainault, Isabel of, wife of Philip Augus- 
tus, 99. 

Hanover, the Elector of, and the Seven 
Tears' War, 498. 

Hapsburg, Rudolph of. Emperor, 121. 

Harlay, Francis de, and Innocent XI., 
418, 423. 

Haro, Don Louis de, Ambassador to 
France, of Philip IV. of Spain, 373 

Harold, son of Earl Godwin, and after- 
wards king of E^orland, 67 ; visits 
William of Normandy, and is detained 
by him until he swears over the relics 
to aid the Duke to maintain the English 
crown, 68; anointed King of England 



598 



History of France. 



by Aldred, archbisTiop of Tork, 69 ; 

marches to subdue Tostig, 70 ; death 

of, at Hastings' fight, 72. 
Haroun al- Raschid, 74. 
Hastenc of Hastings, chieftain of the 

Northmen, ravages France, 52. 
Hastings, the battle of, 70. 
Hautefort, Marie d', and Louis XIII., 343. 
Havenought, or, the moneyless, Walter, 

his crusade, 76. 
Hawke, Admiral, 501. 
Heinsius, grand pensionary, 388, 392. 
Helvetians, the, burn their houses and 

abandon their territory, 58 B.C., but 

are thwarted in their project of settling 

in Gaul by Julius Csesar, and defeated 

and driven back by him, 11, 12. 
Hennebon Castle, gallant defence of, by 

Joan of Flanders, 144. 
Hennuyer, John le, 303. 
Henrietta of England, 378. 

of France and Charles of Eng- 
land, 353, 356. 

Henry I., grandson of Hugh Capet, 64, 65. 

II. of England and Philip II. of 

France, 100. 

•II.ofFrance, 1547— 1559,276; and 



the revolt against the Gahel or salt-tax, 
277; and the treaty, prepares for war with 
Charles V. of Germany, 279 ; and Mary 
of England, war declared between, 281 ; 
and the Spanish invasion of France, 
281 ; and the treaty of Cateau-Cam- 
bresis, 281 ; and the Reformation, 282 ; 
and Francis d'Andelot, 283; acciden- 
tally mortally wounded by the Count 
de Montgomery, death of, 286 ; and 
the Lutherans, 287. 

III. of France and the Religious 



Wars, 1574 — 1589, 307; disappointment 
caused by his first acts as king, 307 ; 
and the League, 308 ; difiSculties of his 
government, 309 ; and Henry of Na- 
varre, 310 ; and Duke Henry de Guise, 
310 ; escapes from Paris and the Duke 
de Guise, 311 ; at the States- General of 
Blois, 312 ; and the murder of Guise, 
312; and Henry of Navarre, 314; stabbed 
by a Monk, 314 ; besieges Paris, 1589, 
death of, 15h9, 315. 
IV. of Enorland and the war with 



France, 178. 

IV. of France, 314; policy of, 316; 



Protestant king, 1589—1593, 323 ; and 
the Cardinal de Boui'bon, 317; defeats 
the Duke of Mayenne at Arques, 318 ; 
foreign opinion of, 318 ; at the battle 
of Ivry, 319 ; besieges Paris, 320 ; and 
the Duke of Parma, 321 ; and the siege 
of Rouen, 328 ; decides to turn Catholic, 
323; besieges Dreux, 324; turns Catholic, 
325 ; Catholic king, 1593—1610, 326 j 



anointed at Chartres, 326 ; enters Paris, 
1594, 327 ; attempted murder of, by 
John Chastel, 328 ; declares war -with 
Philip II. of Spain, 328 ; gallant con- 
duct at the encounter of Fontaine- 
Fran9aise, 328 ; makes peace with Spain 
at Vervins, issues the Edict of Nantes, 
329 ; and the House of Austria, 330 ; 
foreign policy of, 331 ; his ministers, 
331-333 ; and Marguerite of Valois, 
annulment of their marriage, 333 ; and 
Biron's conspiracy, 334; assassinated, 
335 ; work of, completed, 374. 

Henry V., Emperor of Germany, declines 
battle with Louis VI., 98. 

V. of England, designs on the 

Crown of Prance, 177 ; lands with his 
army near Harfleur on the 14th August, 
1415, 178 ; and the battle of Agincourt, 

178 ; resumes his campaign in France, 

179 ; death of, at Vincennes, 184. 
VI. of England, 185 ; crowned at 



Paris, 1431, 191; marries Margaret of 
Anjou, 193. 
VIII. of England and the League 



of the Holy Union, 1511, 234; sends a 
fieet to aid Ferdinand of Spain, 234; 
and the affair of the Spurs, 1513, 236 ; 
makes peace with Louis XII.. 236; and 
European affairs in 1519, 247 ; meets 
Francis I. at The Field of the Cloth of 
Gold, 248 ; agrees to aid Charles II. of 
Bourbon against Francis I., 250 ; and 
the Holy League, 259 ; and Charles V. 
of Germany, treaty between, 1543, 262; 
invades France, 263 ; and the Refor- 
mation, 270. 

Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy, 

Count of Anjou, marries Eleanor of 
Aquitaine, and on the death of Stephen, 
in 1154, he becomes King of England, 84. 

Heraclea Cacabaria (Saint-Gilles), found- 
ing of, 2. 

Heretics first burnt in France, 106- 

Hermengarde, wife of Louis the Debon- 
nair, death of, 55. 

Hildebrand, the celebrated Monk, after- 
wards Pope Gregory, 85. 

Hochkirch, the battle of, 500. 

Hochstett, the battle of, 1704, 389. 

Holland, liberty and prosperity of, se- 
cured by Heinsius, at the expense of 
her political position in Europe, 392 j 
joins England against Louis XV., 472. 

Holy City, the, 73. 

League, 259. 

Sepulchre. 74. 

Honorius III., Pope, 107. 

Hospital, Chancellor de l", 290, 291, 298, 

303. 
H6tel des Invalides and LouyoIs, 404. 
Houdon, sculptor, 533. 



Index. 



599 



Eowe, Lord, reviotuals Gibraltar during 
the three years' siege, 548. 

Huguenots, the, 270, 271 ; Montluc's per- 
secution of, 294 ; and the Fall of La 
Rochelle, 353 ; and Richelieu, 354 ; and 
Louis XIV., 384 ; loyalty of, 411. 

Human sacrifices, 23. 

Hume, History of England, quoted, 115 ; 
and Rousseau, 325. 

Hundred Years' War, the, 141 ; Charles 
v., and the, 162 ; Charles VII., Joan of 
Arc, 1422—1461, and the, 186; Joan of 
Arc"s, the glory of bringing to an end 
the, 196. 

Hungarians, the, or Magyars, invade 
France, 27. 

Huns, the, 28 ; arrival of, in Gaul, under 
their Kins: Attila, A.D. 451, 28 ; driven 
out of Gaul, 29. 

Huss, John, 270. 

Hyder Ali and the strugjle against the 
English in India, 484, 547. 



Ibarra, Don Diego d', 327. 

Iberians, the, 1, 2. 

Ibn-al-Arabi, Saracen chief, 44. 

He de France, colony of, 482. 

Illyria, settlement of the Gauls in, B.C. 

587, 4. 
India Company, the French, 478. 
Companies, the, rivalry between 

the French and English, 479-487. 

, the French in, 479. 

lost to Prance, 504. 



Ingeburgai, Princess, of Denmart, wife of 

Philip Augustus, 108 
Innocent II., Pope, and Louis VII., 80. 
' III., Pope, summons France to 

extirpate the Albigensians, 105 ; and 

Simon de Montfort, 106 ; death of, 107 ; 

and the conjugal ii regularity of Philip 

Augustus, 108. 

- XI., Pope, and the Augsburg 



League against Louis XIV., 384. 
XIII., Pope, makes Dubois 



Cardinal, 460. 
Irenseus, St., second Bishop of Lyons, A.D. 

177 to 202, 75 
Iron Mask, the, 437- 
Iroquois, the, 491. 
Isabel, daughter of Philip IV., espoused 

by Edward II. of England, 174. 

of Bavaria, Queen, 173, 175. 

Islamism, the tide of, rolled back by the 

wars of the Crusades, 38 
Isle-de- France, personal domain of the 

King of France, 62. 
Italian League, the, and Charles VIIL, 

223. 



Italy, the wars of, and Charles VIII., 222 ; 

the wars in, and Louis XII, 226, 227. 
Ivry, the battle of, 1590, 319. 



Jacobite rising, the Scottish, of 1745, 476. 

Jacquery, the, 155. 

Jacques, Bonhomme, origin of the term, 
155. 
Coeur. See Cceur. 

James I. of England and the marriage of 
his son Prince Charles, 353, 356. 

II. of England abdicates, and is 

splendidly received by Louis XIV. in 
France, 385 ; his expedition to take 
Ireland, and the battle of the Boyne, 
385. 

Jansenism in Prance, 414; Louis XIV. 's 
last blow at, 415 ; Jansenism and Mme. 
de Maintenon, 416; in Paris in 1735, 
468. 

Jausenists, the, set at libetty, 449. 

Jansenius and his teaching, 414. 

Ja^rdin des Plantes, Le, and Richelieu, 366 ; 
and Buffon, 523. 

Jarnac, the battle of, 1569, 298. 

Jeannin, President, 303. 

Jerome of Prague, 270. 

Jerusalem, the cradle of Christianity, 73 ; 
besieged by the Mussulmans, 74 ; siege 
and capture of, by the Crusaders, 77 ; 
under Christian rule, 1100 — li86, 79 ; 
the fall <f the Christian kingdom of, 
causes great consternation throughout 
Christendom, 84. 

Jesuits, the, 328, 490; the Portuguese, 
under Louis XV., 505, 506; the Order 
of, dissolved by Rome, 506 ; the Society 
of the, suppressed in Prance by the 
Edict of 1764, 506 ; expelled from Spain, 
506. 

Joan, wife of Louis XII., 217- 

of Penthievre, the cripple, wife of 

Charles of Blois, energy of, 143, 144. 

H<;cliette, 206. 

of Arc, 186-191. 

Joans, history of the war of the Three, 
143-145. 

John Lackland, King of England, acd 
Philip II. of Prance, 102; murders his 
nephew Arthur, 100. 

I. of France, 133. 

II., King of Prance, called the Good, 

150 ; and Charles of Navarre, 151 ; with 
his army, comes up with the Prince of 
Wales and the English near Poictiers ; 
defeated and taken prisuuer at the 
battle of Poictiers, 152 ; his captivity 
. in England, 158 ; his ransom ; set 
at liberty and escorted to France by 
the Prince of Wales, 159; takes pos- 



6oo 



History of France. 



session of the duchy of Burgundy, and 
bestows it on his son Philip, 161 ; volun- 
tarily i-eturns to captivity in England, 
and dies in London, 1364, 162. 

Joinville, Sire de, " One of the most 
sprightly and charming writers of the 
nascent French language," 266, 267 j 
quoted, 91, 92, 114, 115, 118. 

Jomandes, the Gothic historian, 28. 

Joyeuse, Anne, Duke of, 328. 

Jndith, the Empress, 55. 

Julius II., Pope, 229; and the Venetians, 
230 ; his joy at the death of Cardinal 
Amboise, 232 ; the soldier pope, energy 
of, 233 ; death of, 235. 

K. 

Karikal, 483 ; restored to the French, 549. 

Karle, or Callet, William of, 155, 156. 

Kaunitz, Count, 495. 

Keith, Lord, and Voltaire, 519, 

Keppel, Admiral, 541. 

Kersaint, Admiral de, 546. 

Khevenhuller, General, 471. 

Kingship, the, in France, decline of, 446 ; 

decay of, 493, 505. 
Kolin, battle of, 497. 
Kymrians, the, 3. 
Kymro-Belgians, 3. 



La Bourdonnais, 482. 

La Bruyere, his account of Richelieu, 366 ; 
estimate of Richelieu, 213 j character 
and works of, 427, 428. 

Ladies' Peace, the, 260. 

La Fayette, Louis de, and Louis XIII., 
343. 

, Madame de, and Rochefou- 
cauld, 42a 

— lands in America, 1777, 542 ; 



at the capture of Yorktown, 394 ; and 
Washington, 543, 

Tja Fontaine, 431. 

Lagi-ange, 553. 

La Hire, 186. 

Lally-Toleudal, Count ; sai^s with a 
French fleet to avenge the French re- 
verses in India, 486 ; accused of treason 
and beheaded, 487. 

Languedoc, ravaged by the Black Plague, 
149 ; the estates of, and the Chancellor 
Duprat, 246. 

• Canal, the, 402. 

, persecution of the Protestants 

of, under Louis XIV., 412, 413. 

Lannoy, Viceroy of Naples, 252, 257. 

La Noue, 297 ; quoted, 294. 

La Peyrouse, M. de la, 554. 

Laplace, M. de, 553. 



La Rochefoucauld, the Duko of, 369; and 
Madame de La Fayette, 426. 

La Rochelle, and the English, 168; re- 
bellion in 1542, 277; siege of; in 1572, 
304, 305 ; obstinate resistance of the 
citizens of, to Louis XIII., 353 ; capitu- 
lation of, to Louis XIII., 1628, 353. 

La Salle, one of the earliest of the Ame- 
rican Pioneers, 490. 

Latin Paganism, 24. 

La Tremoille, 220, 224, 226, 228, 235, 
251. 

Lautrec, Marshal de, 249, 251 ; death of, 
260. 

Laazun, M. de, 437. 

La Valette, the Duke of, trial of, 347. 

La Vallicre, Mdlle. de, and Louis XIV., 
436. 

Lavoisier, 553. 

Law, John, the Scottish adventurer, 
birth, character and schemes of, 450 — 
452. 

Lawfeldt, the battle of, 479. 

League of the Holy Union, against Louis 
XII,, 234. 

League, the, of the Sixteenth Century, 
308; and Henry III., 310; and Henry 
IV., 317. 

, the Spanish, 321. 

, the French, 321, 322, 326. 

Leaguers, the, and the murder of Guise, 
312 ; defeated by Henry IV. at Arques, 
318. 

Leake, Admiral, captures Sardinia, Mi- 
norca, and Port Mahon, 391. 

Lebrun, Charles, 435. 

Leclerc, John, first French martyr of the 
Reformation, 272. 

Leckzinska, Mary, and Louis XV., 509. 

Ijecoeq, Robert, Bishop of Laon, 158. 

Lefevi-e, Jacques, of Etaples, 270l 

Lens, the victory of, 367, 369. 

Leo III., Pope, 224, 296. 

— X , Pope, and Louis XII of France, 
235; and Francis I., 243; and the 
battle of Melegano, 244 ; and the Con- 
cordat with Francis I., 245. 

Le Poussin and Louis XIV., 435. 

Le Qnesnoy, captured by Villars and the 
French, 397. 

Lerida, captured 1707, 390, 

Lesdigniei-es, 340. 

Lespinasse, Mdlle., 526. 

L'Estoile, quoted, 305, 306. 

Lesueur, Eustache, and Poussin, 435. 

Lettres Persanes, the, 512. 

Leudes', the, 39. 

Leyva, Antony de, governor of Pavia, de- 
fends it against Francis I., 270. 

L' Hospital. See Hospital. 

Liege, the siege of, by Louis XI. and 
Charles the Rash, 205. 



Index. 



6oi 



Lille captured, 1707, by Eugene and Marl- 
borough. 391. 

Lincoln, General, 545. 

Lionne, De, and Louis XIV., 375. 

Lissa, the battle of, 499. 

Literature, French, Geoffrey de Villehar- 
douin's history of the conquest of the 
Greek Empire by the Latin Christians, 
one of the earliest and finest monuments, 
of French literature, 267; of the Renais- 
sance, 269; tempo Richelieu, 361-364; 
in the reign of Louis XV., 245. 

Livre, Le, des Metiers d'Etienne Boileau, 
117. 

Lombards, the, 42, 44. 

London and William the Conqueror, 73. 

Londonderry, the 105 days' siege of, by 
the French and the Irish Catholics, 
9S5. 

Longueville, the Duke de, 369, 370. 

Longjumeau, the Peace of, 297. 

Lorrain, Claude, 434. 

Lorraine, 58, 382 ; the annexation of, 
468. 

, Cardinal Louis of, 279. 

, Charles de, Duke of Mayenne. 

See Mayenne. 

-, Prince Charles of, 474 ; and the 



battle of Raucoux, 477; defeated at 
Lissa by Frederick the Great, 499. 

, Francis de, Duke of Guise, 279, 



282, 292. 
Lorris, the treaty of, 114. 
Lothaire, Emperor of the Franks, a.d. 

817, 55, 56. 
Louis the Debonnair, or, Louis the Pious, 

55 ; divides his kingdom between his 

sons Loth aire, Pepin, and Louis, 55 ; 

death of, a.d. 840, 56. 

the Germanic, 56. 

, Prince, son of Philip Augustus, his 

enterprise against England, 107, 108. 

the Stutterer, 54. 

the Ultramai ine, 58, 61. 

III. and the Northmen, 53. 

v., the Sluggard, 61. 

VI., the Fat, or, the Wide Awalce, 

also called the Fat. energy and eflfi- 
ciency of, 97 ; his numerous and suc- 
cessful expeditions against his rebel 
subjects, 98. 

. VII., the Young, his unimportant 

but long reign, 99. 

VIII. of France, a man of downright 

mediocrity, 110. 

IX. or St. Louis. See St. Loais. 

X., called the Quarreller, at his 

death leaving only a daughter, the 
Salic Law is called into effect for the 
first time, and the crown passes to 
Philip the Long, 132, 133. 

XL, youth of, 200; called the Uni- 



versal Spider, 1461 — 1483, 201 ; and 
the rebel barons, 202 ; and the Count of 
Charolais, 203 ; makes peace with his 
barons, 203 ; and Charles the Rash of 
Burgundy, 204; held in the Castle 
of Peronne by Charles the Rash, 205; 
accompanies Charles the Rash to the 
siege of Liege, 205 ; returns to Paris 
after passing the most trying three 
weeks of his life, 206 ; and Edward IV. 
of England, 206 ; Commynes' account 
of, 206, 216; and Edward IV., meeting 
of, at Amiens, 207 ; and the death of 
his brother Charles, 208 , and the 
Swiss Cantons 209 ; and the news of 
the death of Charles the Rash, 210; 
and Mary of Burgundy, 210 ; failure of 
the main policy of, 211 ; and the Count 
de Dampmartin, 213 ; his three great 
services to France, 213; character of, 
214 ; death of, 1483, 216 ; the family 
of, 217. 

Louis XII., crowned at Rheims, reign, his 
home and foreign policy, 226 ; and the 
Italian states, 226 ; and the Duchy of 
Milan ; his army invades Milaness, 
enters Milan, 227 ; and Ferdinand of 
Spain, 229; prepares for the conquest 
of Naples, 226 ; and the French re- 
verses in Italy, 221 ; declares war 
against the Venetians, 230 ; at the 
battle of Agnadello, 238 ; and the 
victory of Ravenna, 234; reopens the 
Italian campaisrn and concludes a 
treaty with Venice at Blois, 234 ; 
foreign policy and home government 
of, 236, 237; character of, private 
life of, 238; marries Princess Mary, 
sister of Henry VIII., 239; death of, 
240, 

XIII , youth of, 336 ; and the murder 

of D'Ancre, 237; and Anne of Austria, 
337 ; and Richelieu, 338 ; and Luynes, 
338 ; Mary de' Medici, civil war be- 
tween, 342 ; and the death of Duke 
Luynes, 340 ; and Talleyrand, Count 
of Chalais, 341 ; severe ordinances of, 
against daels, 341 ; and the revolt of 
Duke Gaston of Orleans and the Duke 
of Montmorency, has Duke Henry of 
Montmorency beheaded, 342, 343 ; and 
Louise de La fayette and Marie d' Haute- 
fort, 343 ; and his favourite Cinq-Mars, 
343 ; and the trial of La Valette, 347 ; 
Cardinal Richelieu and the Provinces, 
348 ; Cardinal Richelieu, the Catholics, 
and the Pi-otestants, 350 - 355 ; his 
rigorous policy against the Rochellese, 
353 ; the capitulation of La Rocheile, 
Richelieu and Foreign Affairs, 355 ; 
and the Duke of Savoy, 356 ; declares 
war with Spain, 357 ; and the death of 



602 



History of France. 



Cardinal Eichelieti, 358; illness and 
death of, 359; Richelieu and literature, 
360-366. 
Louis XIV- , and the policy of Richelieu, 
367 ; the Fronde and the govemment 
of Cardinal Mazarin, 1643—1661, 366 ; 
and the great Conde, 370 ; marriage of, 
with the Infanta of Spain, 373 ; com- 
mences to reign with a splendour and 
puissance without precedent, 375 ; the 
council of, 375 ; his wars and his con- 
quests, 1661—1697, 377 ; and Fouquet, 
376 ; waiting to recommence war, 377 ; 
and John Van Witt, 379 ; and Vauban 
at Lille, 377 ; places Conde in com- 
mand of the new army to reduce the 
Netherlands, 378 ; and the Peace of 
Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668, 378 ; determines 
to make war with the Netherlands, 
378 ; prepares to subdue the Nether- 
lands, the successful commencement of 
the war with Holland, 379 ; reduces 
Franche-Comte, 378 ; his account in 
his Memoires of his eagerness to begin 
the campaign of 1678, 380 ; concludes 
the Peace of Nimegueu with Holland, 
382 ; is intoxicated with his successes, 
383 ; declares war against Holland and 
the Empire and captures the Palati- 
nate, 385 ; efiects of his re^'ocation of 
the Edict of Nantes, 384 ; his magni- 
ficent reception of James II., late King 
of England, 385 ; the grand alliance 
again>t, 386 ; consents to recognize 
William III. as King of England, 386 ; 
his Wars and the partition of the King 
of Spain's dominions, 387; throws over 
the Treaty of Partition and confirms the 
will of Charles II. of Spain, which left 
that kingdom to the Duke of Anjou, 
388 ; and the defeats of Villoroi by 
Marlboi'ough, 389-391 ; proposes peace, 
394 ; his courage under reverses, 394 ; 
and the battle of Malplaquet, 393 ; 
family losses of, 394; and Villars, 395 ; 
disastrous efiects of his ambition on 
France, 397 ; and Louvois' work, 404 ; 
and honie administration, 400 ; and 
Colbert's administration of the finances, 
401 ; reckless expenditure of, 403 ; the 
three passions of, 402 ; and the death 
of Louvois, 405 ; his afiection for Cha- 
millard, 406 ; mistakes of, 407 ; and 
religion, 408; revokes the Edict of 
Nantes, 409 ; and the revolt of the 
Camisards, 413 , and the Jansenists, 
414 ; and Fenelon, 416 ; answerable 
for the religious persecutions of his 
reign, 418; and literature and art, 419- 
435; and his Court, 436; Wdlle. de 
la Valliere, and Madame de Montes- 
pan, 436 j and the death of his queen. 



438; his afiection for the Duchess of 
Burgundy, 439 ; egotism of, 440 ; his 
will, 442, 443 ; death bed of, 443 ; 
death of, September 1st, 1715, 444; 
and the Scottish adventurer Law, 451. 

Louis XV., character of his reign, 447 ; 
the regency and Cardinal Dubois, 1715- 
1723, 448 ; and Peter the Great, 455 ; 
and the Regent Orleans, 452-461 ; de- 
moralization of his court, 461 ; and 
the minisiry of Cardinal Fleury, 1723 
■ — 1748, 464 ; and the persecution of 
the Protestants, 462 ; his proposed 
marriage with the Infanta broken off, 
465 ; and Fleury as his prime minister, 
464; and the Parliament of Paris, 468; 
and the death of Fleury, 472 ; he de- 
clares war against England and Maria 
Theresa, 472 ; joins the army in person, 
473 ; illness of, and the consternation 
of his subjects, 474 ; Marshal Saxe, 
and the battle of Fontenoy, 475 ; re- 
turns in triumph to Paris, 476 ; and the 
treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 479 ; France 
in the Colonies, 1745—1763, 481-494; 
at fifty years of age, and Madame de 
Pompadour, 494 ; declares war with 
England, 175-^, 495 ; and the Franco- 
Austrian alliance, 1756, 496 ; attempted 
assassination of, 1757, 496 ; and the 
outbreak of the Seven Years' War, 
497 ; and the Family Pact with Spain, 
503 ; the Parliament, and the Jesuits, 
505-508; Madame Dubarry; dismisses 
Choiseul, 507; suspected of private 
speculation and of keeping up the price 
of com, 509; and the annexation of 
Corsica, 510 ; political annihilation of, 
in Europe completed by the dismissal 
of Choiseul, 507; his fluctuations be- 
tween remorse and depravity, illness, 
death, and character of, 1774, 511 ; the 
philosophers of his time, 512 ; and 
Diderot, 521 ; and Bufibn, 523. 

XVI., and Marie Antoinette, 532 

and the ministry of M. Turgot, 533 
et seq. ; recalls M. de Maurepas, 533 
recalls the Parliament of Paris, 536 
and the bread riots, 536 ; the core 
nation of, 537 ; dismisses Turgot, 539 
France abroad, United States War of 
Independence, 1775 — 1783. 540; and 
the American War of Independence, 
5-10; his aid to the Americans, 542; 
Prance at Home — IVlinistry of M. 
Necker 1776 — 1781, 550 ; and M. 
Necker's reforms, 551 ; M. de Calonne 
and the Assembly of Notables, 1781 — 
1787, 553 ; and the disgrace of Cardinal 
Rohan, 555 ; and Captain Cook's 
voyage, 554 ; and the Manage de 
FigoA-o, 554 ; and the Assembly of the 



Index. 



603 



Notables, 555; and tie Protestants, 
554, 555 ; convocation of the States- 
general, 1787—1789, 555; and the 
protest of the French Parliaments, 
556 ; recalls M. Necker, 558 ; and the 
Third Estate, 560 ; and the States- 
general of, 1789, 561. 

Louisboiirg, surrendered to Prance, 479. 

Louise of Savoie, 242, 260, 272 ; death of, 
1531, 276. 

Louvois, Marquis de, admitted to Louis 
XIV.'s council, 376; and Turenne, 380; 
increasing power of, only resisted by 
Colbert, and the successes of Louis 
XIV., 332; harsh policy of, in the Pala- 
tinate, 385 ; and influence with Louis 
XIV , 386; b.T the death of the Colberts 
is left alone in his work, 404 ; death of, 
405 ; and the convers on of the Refor- 
mers, 443. 

Lowendahl, Count, 479. 

Lu^on (Richelieu, Bishop of). See Eic/ie- 
Xie-u. 

Ludovic the Moor, Duke of Milan, and 
Charles, 222. 

Lugdunensian Province, the, of Roman 
Gaul, 17. 

Eusignan, Hugh de, Count de la Marche, 
113. 

Lutetia, or Mud, Town, the ancient name 
of Paris, 109. 

Luther, Martin, 270. 

Lutherans, the, and Henry II., 283. 

Luxembourg, John of, captures Joan of 
Ai-c, 189. 

, Louis of, and Louis XI. , 212. 

■ , Marshal, 379; placed by Louis 

XIV. in command of the French armies, 
385; defeats William III. of England, 
385 ; death and character of, 386. 

Luynes, Albert de, 338 ; and Richelieu, 
339 ; and Louis XIII. 339 ; the duke 
of, at the siege of Montauban, death of, 
340. 

I>ynar, Count, 498. 

Lyouness, conquered by the Burgundians, 
28. 

Lyons the chief centre of early Christi- 
anity in Gaul, 24. 

M. 

Machault, M. de, 494, 497. 

Madras, captured by the French, 482 ; re- 
stored to the English, 484. 

Madrid, Treaty of, between Francis I. 
and Charles V., 257. 

Maestricht invested, 1748, 479. 

Magna Oharta, upheld by St. Louis, 115. 

Mahe, 482. 

Maillart and Marcel, 157. 

Maillebois, Marshal, 470. 



Maine's, the Duke of, position as regent 
usurped by the Duke of Orleans, 448 ; 
and the Oi leans regency, 453. 

— — , the Duchess of, her mortification 
and rage at the decree against her hus- 
band, 453 ; her plot against the re- 
gency ; arrested and removed to Dijon, 
456. 

Maintenon, Madame de, and Louis XIY., 
438 ; and the persecution of the Refor- 
mers, 384; and Racine. 430; and the 
death of Louis XIV., 443; death of, 
444. 

Maisonneuve, Paul de, 490. 

Malagrida burnt as a heretic, 506. 

Malebranche, 422. 

Malesherbes, L. de, called to the Ministry 
by Turgot, 537 ; and Diderot, 522. 

Malherbe, 362 ; his account of the assas- 
sination of Henry IV., 335. 

Malleteers, the, 172. 

Malouet, and the convocation of the 
States-General, 1789, 562, 5S4. 

Malplaquet, the battle of, 1709, 393. 

Man with the Iron Mask, the, 437. 

Mandubians, the, 15. 

Mansard, 435. 

Manicheans, the, persecution of, 104. 

Manny, Walter de, 148. 

Mantes, the Conference of, 324. 

Marcel. Stephen, Provost of the trades- 
men of Paris, 154-157. 

Marche, Count de la, and the Count of 
Poitiers ; defeated by St. Louis, 113. 

Marcus Aurelius, account of, 19. 

Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry YI. of 
England, received by Louis XL, 207. 

Marguerite of Austria betrothed to the 
Dauphin Charles, son of Louis XL, 
216; removed fiom France by the 
Archduke Maximilian, 220; death of, 
1530, 260. 

of Provence, wife of St. Louis 

IX., 112. 

de Valois and Francis I., 

beautiful character of, 242 ; the writ- 
ings of, 269 ; death of, 276. 

Maria Theresa, 470. 

ilariage de Figaro, the, and its effects, 
459. 

Marie Antoinette, 532. See Antoinette. 

Marigny, Engnerrand de, chief adviser of 
Philip IV., 131 ; hanged on the gibbet 
of Montfaucon, 132 

Marillac, Francis de, 346. 

Marlboi'ongh, the Duke of, and Blenheim, 
389 ; checked by Villars, 390 ; and the 
battle of Ramilies, 389 ; defeats Ven- 
dome at Audenarde, 391 ; and the 
battle of Malplaquet, 393 ; dismissed 
by Queen Anne, 394. 

Marot, Clement, 268. 



6o4 



History of France. 



Marseilles, the fouiiding and rise of, 2 ; 
horrors of the plague of, and heroic de- 
votion of the religious orders, 459 

Margin, Marshal, at the battle of Blen- 
heim, 389. 

Martel, Charles, 37-39. 

Martin V., Pope, and affaiis in France, 
179. 

Martyrs, the, of Lyons, 25 

Mary of Anjou, wife of Charles VIT., 192. 

, Queen, of England, and Philip II. of 

Spain, 280. 

of Burgundy weds the Archduke 

Maximilian, 220. 

Stuart. See StvMrt. 

Masselin, John, character of, 218, 219, 

Massilia (Marseilles), founding of, 2. 

Massillon, 422. 

Maupoou, M. de. Chancellor, and the fall 
of the Parliament of Paris, 507, 508 ; 
dismissal and death of. 534. 

Maurepas. M. de, recalled by Louis XVI., 
532 ; and M. Necker, 550. 

Maximilian, Archduke, weds Mary of Bur- 
gundy at Ghent, 220 ; of Austria, 221 ; 
and Anne of Brittany, 221. 

I., Emperor, and Louis XII., 230 ; 

joins the Holy League, 234 ; and Henry 
Via of England in Prance, 236; death 
of, 218. 

Mayenne, the Duke of, 308, 310; defeated 
by Henry IV. at Arques, 318 ; at Paris, 
322, 323 ; joins Henry IV., 328. 

Maynier, John de, baron of Oppede, 273. 

Mayors, the, of the palace, 36. 

Mazariu, Julius, concludes a treaty of 
peace and commerce with Cromwell, 
373. 

, Cardinal, 3f56 ; recommended to 

Louis XIII. by Richelieu, 366; de- 
nounced by the Parliament of Paris, 
369 ; defeated and obliged to leave 
France, 371 ; his state-stroke, 372 ; be- 
comes all-powerful, 372 ; concludes 
the Peace of the Pyrenees with JSpain, 
373 ; death of, 374. 

Medici, Peter de', and Charles VIII., 
222. 

■ , Queen Catherine de', 288; cha- 
racter of, 292 ; and the St. Bartholo- 
mew, 302, 303; and the death of 
Charles IX., 306 ; and the League, 308 ; 
and the duke de Guise, 311 ; death of, 
318. 

, Ferdinand de', 333. 

■ , Queen Mary de', marries Henry 

IV., 333, 334 ; Regency of, 1610—1617, 
336 ; and Richelieu, her flight from 
Blois, 338 ; and Louis XIII., civil war 
between, 339 ; flight of, 339. 

, the family of the, and Francis I., 

245. 



Mediterranean, pirates of the, in 1532, 

262. 
Melancthon, and Francis I., 273. 
Melegnano, the battle of, 244. 
Mello, Don Francisco de, invades France, 

367. 
Mellobaudes, a leader of the Franks, 27. 
Menageot, painter, 533. 
Merania, Princess Agnes of, and Philip 

Augustus, 108. 
Meroveus, 29. 
Merovingian kings, the greedy, licentious. 

and cruel, 34. 
Mesmer, 553. 

Messina gives herself np to France, 381. 
Metz, the siege of, in 1552, 279 ; restored 

to France, 281. 
Micheli, John, his account of Catherine de 

Medici, 292. 
Mignard, 435. 
Milan, the duchy of, and Charles VTIL, 

222 ; siege of, raised by Gaston de 

Foix, 233. 
Milaness and Louis XII., 226. 
Minden, the battle of, 1759, 501, 502. 
Minorca captured by Admiral Leake, 391 ; 

captured from the English, 1782, 547. 
Mirabeau, birth and character of, 560 ; 

and the Revolution, 561 ; and M. 

Necke'r, 564 ; and the title of the 

States-general, 565. 
Missi dominici, Charlemagne's chief agents 

in his government, 47. 
Missionaries, the first Christian, in Gaul, 

23, 24. 
Mississippi, the scheme of Law, 451. 
Molay, James de. Grand Master of the Tem- 
plars, arrested, accused, and burnt, 131. 
Mole, President, 369 
Moliere, 431 ; early dramatic works of, 

432 ; his Misanthrope, &c., 432 ; Bour- 
geois Gentilhomme, &c., 433. 
Moncontour, battle of, 1569, 298. 
Monge, M., 553. 

MoncBCUs (Monaco), founding of, 2. 
Mons captured by Louis XIV., 385. 
Monseigneur, Grand Dauphin, 394. 
Motisieur' s Peace, 1576, 309. 
Monsigny, musician, 533. 
Montaigne, Michael de, character and 

essays of, 359, 360. 
Montauban, siege of, 1621, 340. 
Montcalm, the Marquis of, death of, and 

the loss of Quebec, 492. 
Montecuculli, General, and the death of 

Tnrenne, 381. 
Montereau. siege of, by Charles VII. in 

person, 192. 
Montespan, Madame de, and Louis XIV., 

436. 
Montesquieu, his Lettres Persanes, 512 j 

the works of, 512, 513. 



Index. 



605 



Montfort, John of, his* war with Charles of 

Blois, 143, 144. 

, Simon de. See Simon. 

Montgolfier, MM. de, aud the first balloon, 

554. 
Montgomery, Count de, by accident mor- 
tally wounds King Henry II., 284. 
Moutlhery, engagement at, between Louis 

XI. and the rebel barons, 303. 
Montluc, Blaise de, cruelties of, 294. 
Montmorency, Marshal de, death of, 342, 

343. 
, the Constable Anne de, 277,278, 

279 ; wounded and captured at St. 

Quentin, 281 ; taken prisoner at the 

battle of Dreux, 294. 
, Henry, Duke of, wounded at 

Castelnaudary, executed, 342, 343. 
Montpensier, the Duchess of, 327. 
, Mdlle. de, called the Great 

Mademoiselle, and the Fronde, 371, 372. 
Montreal, capitulation of, 1760, 493. 
Monts, M. de, appointed viceroy of Acadia, 

489. 
Montsabert, M. de, arrest of, 557. 
Moors, the, 38, 39. 
Morat, defeat of Charles the Eash at, by 

the Swiss, 209. 
Mornay, Du-Plessis, and the Protestants, 

332. 
Motte, Admiral de la, 546. 
Mounier, M. 558 ; and the Third Estate, 

565. 
Mount of Olives, the, 74. 
Miilhausen, fight of, 380. 
Muretus, 268. 
Mussulman Arabs, the, pass over into 

Europe, establish themselves in Spain, 

and invade France, 37, 38. 

N. 

Najara, the battle of, gained by the Eng- 
lish in Spain over Heniy of Transta- 
mare and Guesclin, 166. 

Nancy, defeat and death of Charles the 
Eash of Burgundy at, 210. 

Nantes, the Edict of, 329 ; revoked by 
Louis XIV., 384 ; in 1685, 409, 410. 

Naples and Louis XIL, 234. 

Narbonness, conquered by the Visigoths, 
28. 

Nassau, the Count de, 220. 

Naiiona! Assembhj, adopted as the style of 
the States- General, 565. 

Navarre, Anthony de Bourbon, King of, 
293, 294 ; death of, 294, 

, Charles the Bad of, 151 ; his 

treason, 151 ; accepts the leadership of 
Marcel's, party, 156 ; submits to the 
Dauphin, 158. 

, Henry of, and Marguerite de 



"Valois, 299; and Henry III., 314; be- 
comes heir to the French tbrone, 315; 
and the murder of Henry III., 316. 

Navarre, Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of, 297. 

Navy, the, and Eichelieu, 349 ; the French, 
under Louis XV., 492, 495, 510. 

Necker, M., Director- General of Finance 
under Louis XVI., 558 ; financial ad- 
ministration of, 551 ; resifins, 551 ; re- 
called by Louis XVI., 558; in the 
States-General of 1789, 563. 

Nerac, the Peace of, in 1579, 309. 

Nero, hatred of, by the Gauls, 18. 

Neustria, kingdom of, 33, 35. 

Nevers, Duke de, 357. 

Newfoundland, ceded to England by- 
France at the Peace of Utrecht, 1712, 
491. 

New France, and Cardinal Eichelieu, 489. 

Newton, 516. 

Nicsea (Nice), founding of, 2. 

Nicholas V., Pope, and Jacques Cceur, 97. 

Nicole, M., quoted, 197. 

Nicopolis, battle of, between the Chris-, 
tians and the Turks, in which the former 
are destroyed, 175. 

Nimeguen, the Peace of, between Louis 
XIV. and Holland, 382. 

Noailles, Cardinal de, and the Orleans, 
Eegency 449. 

, Marshal, and the campaign of 

1734, 406 ; at Dettingen, 473. 

, the Duke of, made head of the 

Council of Finance during the Orleans 
Eegency, 449 ; and Law's schemes, 450. 

Nogaret, William de, 129. 

Norman, the. Conquest of England, 69, 70. 

Normandy, the Estates of, offer to under- 
take, at their own expense, to re-con- 
quer England, which had just declared 
war with Phillip VI. of France, 142 ; 
completely won back to France by 
Charles VII., 1450, 193 ; the revolt of, 
against the taxation of Louis XIII., 
347 ; emigration of persecuted reformers 
from, in the reign of Louis XIV., 412. 

, William of. See William. 

Normans, the, and the discovery of Ame- 
rica, 488. 

North, Lord, 514. 

Northmen, the, their incursions into 
France, 52, 53. 

Notables, assembly of the, 555. 

Notrc-Dame de Paris, cathedral of, com- 
pleted in the reign of Philip Augustus, 
110. 

Noue, La. See La Noue. 

Novara, battle of, 1513, in which the 
French are defeated, 236. 

Noyon, treaty of, between Francis I. and 
the Archduke Charles of Austria, 245. 

Nu-pieds, revolt of the, 347. 



6o6 



History of France. 



Olier, M., 490. 

Oliver de Clisson, 173. 
and Roland, 45. 

Omar captures Jerusalem, 74. 

Oppede, Baron d', 273. 

Orange, William, the Prince of, and Louis 
XIV., the campaign against the Nether- 
iRnds, 379 ; and the murder of the 
Witts, 380 ; opposition of, to the peace 
party, 383 ; and the battle of Slons, 
382 ; and the deputies of the estates, 
and Mary, marriage of, and its con- 
sequences to France, 381. 

Orders, the three, composing the States- 
General, 129. 

Orleans, siege of, by Attila and the Huns, 
28 ; the Maid of (see Joan of An-^ ; be- 
sieged by the English under the Duke 
of Bedford, 1428, 187 ; the siege of, 
raised through the Maid of Orleans, 
188 ; tribute of, to the memory of Joan 
of Arc, 191 ; the siege of, in 1563, 294. 

• , Louis, Duke of, 175; death of, 

176. 

. , the Duke Charles of, and Henry V. 

at the battle of Agincourt, 179. 

Duke Gaston of, and Richelieu, 

342, 343; and Mazarin, 366; submis- 
sion, retirement, and death of, 372. 

• — , the legency of the Duke of, is 
confirmed by the Parliament, 448 ; re- 
gency, the, and the reduction of taxa- 
tion, 450 ; and the policy of Alberoni, 

457 ; declares war with Spain, 1719, 

458 ; and the Dubois treaties with Eng- 
land and Holland, 1717, 457 ; and the 
plague, 459. 

, the Regent, and the Scotch ad- 
venturer Law, 450 ; outstrips Law in 
his wild financial schemes, 452 ; and the 
exclusion of the legitimatized princes' 
right of succession to the throne, 453 ; 
and the Duchess of Maine's plot, 453 ; 
and Dubois, 454; and Dubois as xirch- 
bishop of Cambria, 458 ; and Belzunce, 

459 ; death and character of, 461. 

• , the Duke of, and Louis XVI., 

536 ; and the States-General of, 1789, 
563. 

Ornano, Alphonso Corso d', 341. 

Orvilliers, Count d', 54i. 

Ossat. Arnauld d', 333. 

Otho IV., Emperor of Germany, and John 
Lackland plan a grand attack upon 
Philip II. of France, 100; his proposed 
dismemberment of France, 101, 102. 



Paderbom, Saxons baptized at, by Charle- 
magne, 43. 



Paganism, fall of, 24. 

Painters of the reign of Louis XIV., 434- 
436. 

Palace, the School of the, 50. 

Palatinate, the, devastated by the French 
in 1689, 385. 

Palisse, Chabannes, Lord of La, 254, 255. 

Paoli, Pascal, the hero of Corsica, 510. 

Pare, Ambrose, 305. 

Paris, ancieut name of, see Lutetia ; 
chosen as the seat of Government of 
the Franks by Clovis, 32; death of 
Clovis at, 32 ; pillaged by the North- 
men, 53 ; improvements of Philip 
Augustus in, 109; threatened by Ed- 
ward TIL, 146 ; besieged by the Eng- 
lish, 1360, 160 ; the university of, and 
Charles V., 170 ; given up to Riche- 
mont and the National Party in France, 
and evacuated by the English, 190; the 
Parliament of, and Duprat's sale of 
public appointments, 246 ; the Parlia- 
ment of, and the Concordat between 
Francis I. and Leo X., 247 ; revolt of 
the populace of, 1588, under Duke Henry 
de Guise, 311; siege of, by Henry III., 
1589, 314 ; the Parliament of, and the 
Bourbon Pretender, 317; besieged by 
Henry IV., 320; the Parliament of, 
and the Edict of Nantes, 329 ; and 
Louis XIII., 342; and Mazarin, 369; 
and the Fronde, 368, 369 ; the Parlia- 
ment of, and its struggles with Fleury, 
468; and Louis XV., 497, 507; the 
Peace of, 17fi2, 505; the Parliameut of, 
and the Jesuits, 506. 

Paris-Duverney, 462. 

Parker, Admiral Hyde, 546. 

Parliament, the, of Paris (see also Faris). 
banished by Louis XV., 507 ; recalled 
by Louis XVI., 531; arrest of members 
of the, 1788.. 556, 557. 

Parliaments, the, of France and Cardinal 
Richelieu, 329 ; protests of the, 556. 

Parma annexed by Francis I., 245. 

, Duke Alexander of, invades 

France, 320, 321. 

, the battle at, 467, 



Pascal, Blaise, 419, 420. 
Pasquier, Stephen, 266. 
Patay, the battle of, in which the French, 

with Joan of Arc defeat the English, 

188. 
Patelin, the Farce of, 267. 
Paul, St. Vincent de, 350. 
Pavia, besieged by Charlemagne, 44 ; the 

battle of, between Francis I. of France 

and the Imperial troops under Bourbon 

and Pescara, 255. 
Pecquigny, the Peace of, between Louis 

XI. and Edward IV., 207. 
People's Battle, the, of Boavines, 101. 



Index. 



607 



Pepin of Landen, called The Ancient, 37. 

■ of Heristal, glorious acts of, his 

death, 37. 

■ the Short, 40 ; proclaimed King of 

the Franks at Soissons, A.D. 752, 41 j 
his expeditions, 41, 42. 

Perelle, Abbe, 460. 

Peronne, Treaty of, 205. 

Perrault, 435. 

Pescara, the Marquis of, 252, 253, 256. 

Peschiera, capture of, by Louis XII., 231. 

Peter de la Brosse and Phillip III., 121. 

the Great and Madame de Main- 
tenon, 444; visits Prance, 155, 456. 

• , the Hermit, 74, 75, 76. 

the Venerable, Abbot of Cluni, 104. 

III., Czar, and Frederick the Great, 

504. 

Petigliano, Count, at the battle of Agna- 
dello, 231. 

Philip I., 64, 65. 

" II., or Philip Augustus of France, 

99; joins in a new Crusade, 85; and 
Richard Cceur de Lion at Messina, 86 ; 
leaves the Holy Land, 87 ; his relations 
with Henry II of England, Richard 
CcBur de Lion, and John Lackland, 100 ; 
in order to avert a joint attack from 
John Lackland, King of England, and 
Otho IV. of Germany, threatens to in- 
vade England, TOO ; at the battle of 
Bouvines, 101 ; and Agnes of Merania, 
108 ; administrative acts of, 109 ; re- 
ceives a present of fawns, hinds, does, 
and bucks from the King of England to 
stock his wood of Vincennes, 109 ; 
death of, 110. 

III. of France, surnamed the Bold, 



his disastrous termination of his father's 
crusade, 120 ; government, character, 
acts, and death of, 121. 

IV., called the Handsome, cha- 



racter of, 122 ; defeats Guy de Dam- 
pierre. Count of Flanders, 123, 124 ; 
Flanders submits to, 124 ; defeated by 
the Flemings at Courtrai, prepares to 
renew the war, 124; defeats the 
Flemings at Mons-en-Puelle, and lays 
siege to Lille, 125, 126 ; and Pope Boni- 
face VIII., 126, 127, 128, 129 ; death and 
character of, 131 ; the three sons of, 
132. 

v., called the Long, 132, 133. 

VI., or Philip of Valois, 140 ; and 

Robert of Artois, 141 ; his preparations 
for war with England, 142 ; aids Count 
Louis de Nevers against the Flemings, 
142 ; and Edward III., renewal of the 
war between, 143, 144 ; and the French 
before the battle of Crecy, 146 ; flight 
from Crecy fight, 147 ; fears to raise 
the siege of Calais, and returns to | 



Amiens, 148 ; death of, 1350, 149 j and 
James Van Artevelde, 142. 

Philip II , of Spain, 240 ; captures St. 
Quentin, 281; and the peace of Cateaa- 
Cambresis, 281 ; and the Duke of 
Parma, 320; and Henry III., 309; and 
Heury IV., war between, formally de- 
clared, 328 ; character of, death of, 
September, 1598, 330. 

IV., of Spain, and the Peace of 

the Pyrenees, 374. 

V. of Spain, renounces all claim 

to the throne of France, 388 ; refuses 
to abdicate, 392 ; and bis claims to the 
Frence throne, 453 ; death of, 478 

Philippa, Qu=!en, intercedes for the six 
Biirghers of Calais with Edward III., 
146. 

Philosophers, the, of the reign of Louis 
XV , 512—531. 

Philosophy in France in the Middle ages, 
103, 264, 265. 

Phocean colony established in Gaul, 4. 

Phoenicians, the, 2. 

Piacenza annexed by Francis I., 245. 

Piccini, 533. 

Piedmont, and Charles VIII. of France, 
222. 

Pillar- house, the, of Marcel, 155. 

Pisa, the Council of, 1511, 230. 

Pitt, William, returns to office, 500 ; 
haughty prejudice of, against France, 
503. 

Pius Antoninus, 19. 

Plague of Florence, the, or the Black 
Plague, 149; ravages of the, in 1363, 
162. 

, the, in France in 1719, 459. 

Plelo, Count, killed at Dantzic, 465, 466. 

Plessis-les-Tours, residence of Louis XL, 
215. 

Plessis Momav, Philip du, 89. See Bu 
Plessis-Mornay . 

Poets, the, of France in the Middle Ages, 
267, 268. 

Poictiers, the battle of, September 19th, 
152 ; see also Poitiers. 

Poisson, Mdlle. See Pompadour. 

Poitiers (see also Poictiers), battle near, 
between the Goths under A'aric II. 
and the Franks under Clovis, a.d. 507, 
31 ; great battle at, between the united 
Franks under Charles Martel and the 
Arabs under Abdel-Rhaman, in which 
the latter are defeated, a d 732, 38. 

Poitou, 100. 

Poland, the crown of, offered to the Duke 
of Anjou, 306; events preceding the 
Partition of, 465 ; the Partition of, by 
the Treaty of Warsaw, 1772, 510, 511. 

Policists, the, 298. 

Polignac, Madame do, 552. 



6o8 



History of France. 



Poltrot, Jolii], 294, 295. 

Polycarp, St., 25. 

Pompadour, Madame de, 494; death and 
character of, 507. 

Pompignan, Lefranc de, 558. 

Pondicherry and Governor Dupleis, 483, 
484 ; captured by the English, 1778, 
547 ; restored to the French, 547. 

Ponts de Ce, engagement of, 339. 

Poquelin, John Baptist. See Muliere. 

Poree, Gilbert de la, 265. 

Port-Royal des Champs, 351, 352, 414- 
416. 

Pothinus, St., first Bishop of Lyons, 25. 

Pragmatic Sanction, the, 116 ; of Charles 
VII., 199; and Francis I. and Leo X., 
246 ; its three principal objects, 247. 

, relating to Maria Theresa, gua- 
ranteed by France, 469, 470 ; recognized 
by France, 479. 

Prague, the siege of, given up by Chevert, 
471. 

Praguery, the, 200. 

Preston-Pans, the battle of, 476. 

Prie, the Marchioness of, 462-464. 

Probus, Romaii emperor, 20. 

Prose writers, the, of France in the Middle 
Ages, 266. 

Pi otestants, the, after the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, 304; and Henry IV., 
323 ; and the issue of the Edict of 
Nantes, 329; persecutions of, under 
Louis XIV., 408—413; under the Or- 
leans Eegency, 449; and the terrible 
edict of 1724, 463; and Louis XVI., 
527. 

Protestantism in Louis XIV.'s reign, 408- 
413. 

Provence, ravaged by the Black Plague, 
149 ; the Parliament of, 560. 

Prussia and France, and the Partition of 
Poland, 1772, 510, 511. 

Puget, 435. 

Pyrenees, Peace of the, 1659, puts an end 
to the twenty -three years' war between 
France and Spain, 374. 

Pytheas, the explorer, 2. 

Q. 

Quebec, Cl.amplain made first governor 
of, 489 ; gallant defence of, by the 
French Caiiadians against Wolfe; capi- 
tulation of, 1759, 493. 

Quesnel, Father, 416. 

Quietisvi, 416 ; and Madame de Mainte- 
non, 417. 

Quincampoix, the street of the specula- 
tors, during John Law's reign, 452. 

E. 

Eabelais, Fran9oi8, 269. 



Eabutin-Chantal, Marie de. Marchioness 
of Sevigne. See Seviynd. 

Racine, 429, 430. 

Eagnacaire, King of the Franks of Cam- 
brai, 32. 

Rambouillet, Hotel, meetings of the Lite- 
rati of the reign of Henry IV. at, 
362. 

Ramilies, the battle of, 1706, 389. 

Ramus, Peter la Ramee, 268. 

Ratisbonne, the Diet of, 1687, 384. 

Eaucoux, battle of, 477. 

Ravaillac assassinates Henry IV., 235. 

Ravenna the battle of, 1512, 234. 

Raymond VI., of Toulouse 105-107. 

VII., of Toulouse, 107. 

Reformation, the, and Francis I., 270 ; 
state of the, in France in 1561, 291 ; in 
the latter half of the 16th century, 
304. 

Eeformers, the French, and Mary de' 
Medici, 337 ; rising of the, against 
Louis XIII., 353. 

Eeligion in France in the Middle Ages, 
102, 103; in the reign of Louis XV., 
461. ■ 

Eeligious Wars in France, outbreak of the, 
275. 

War, outbreak of the Fourth, 

1572, 306; outbreak of the Fifth in 
France, 310. 

Eenaissance, the age of the, 264. 

Renart, the Romances of, 267. 

Eenaudie, Lord de la, death of, 289. 

Eene, II., King of Lorraine, and Louia 
XL, 210. 

Eetz, Cardinal de, 369, 370. 

Eeveillon riot, the, 561. 

Eevolution, the, the eve of, 562. ^ 

Eibaut, John, heroic death of, 488. 

Eichard Cceur de Lion, in the Holy Land, 
79, 85, 86. 

Eiohelieu, Armand John du Plessis de. 
Bishop of Lu9on (afterwards Cardinal), 
birth and early life of, 338; effecrs a 
treaty between Mary de' Medici and 
Louis XIII., 339; and Luynes, 339; 
his character of Luynes, 340 ; and the 
gi-eat lords, 341 ; and the ordinance 
against duels, 341 : designs of Mary de' 
Medici against, 342 ; and the revolt of 
Montmorency, 343 ; and Cinq-Mars, 
343 ; illness of, and conspiracy of Cinq- 
Mars agaiust, 344, 345; and the Par- 
liament, 346 ; and the French navy, 
349; and St. Cyran, 351; and the 
Church and State, 352 ; and the revolt 
of La Eochelle, 353 ; and the expedition 
against Buckingham in the island of Rhe, 
351 ; and the capitulation of La Eochelle, 
1628, 353 ; and the Duke of Eohan, 
353; and the capitulation of Moutau- 



Index. 



Cog 



ban, 355 ; foreign policy of, 355 ; and 
Gustavas Adolphus, 357 ; seventy-four 
treaties concluded by, 355 ; and the mar- 
riage of the Pi ince of Wales with Hen- 
rietta of France, 356; and the French 
settlements in Canada, 489 ; death of, 
358 ; and Louis XIII. and literature, 
359-366 ; La Bruyere's estimate of, 366 ; 
his monument, and Peter the Great, 456. 

Richelieu, the Duke of, 477. 

, Marshal, defeats Admiral Byng 

and captures Minorca, 495. 

Richemont, the Constable de, 193. 

Ricimer, a Suevian leader, 27. 

Rigaud, 435 

Rignomer, King of the Franks of Le 
Mans, 32. 

Ripuarian Franks, the, 32. 

Robais, Van, 401. 

Robert of Artois and Philip VI., 141, 142. 

, Count of Paris, and the Emperor 

Alexis, 

, the Strong, 61. 

, son of Hugh Capet, 63. 

Robertet, Florimond, Finance Minister of 
Louis XII. ; and Francis I., 243. 

Rochambeau, Count de, and the capture oi 
Yorktown, 546. 

Rochefoucauld, see La Rochefoucauld. 

Rodney, Admiral, 546. 

Rohan, Duke Henry of, 353 ; death of, 
354. 

, the Duchess of, and the siege of La 

Rochelle, 353. 

, Cardinal, arrested and disgraced, 



556. 

Roland, the Song of, 45, 267. 

, death of 44. 

, the Camisard, 413. 

Rolf (or RoUo), the Northman, invades 

France, 54. 
Roman Armies, the, and the Barbarians, 

last grand struggle between, 28. 
, Empire, the decay of, 20 ; division 

of, 21 ; final dissolntion of, 21. 
customs and manners forced on 

the Gauls, 17. 

Municipal regimen, the, 18. 

States, the, settled on the Popes 

by Pepin the Short, 42. 
. Victories over the Gauls, B.C. 200 

to 170, 9 et seq. 
Riimance of the Rose, 267. 
Romances of Renart, 267. 
Romans defeat the Gauls of Asia Minor, 

B.C. 189 ; the, in Gaul, 8. 
Rome plants colonies among the Gauls, 8 

aids Marseilles against the Ganls, 9 

and the Papacy, and Charles VIII. 223 

stormed and plundered by the Im 

perialist forces, 1527, 259. 
Roncesvalles, death o£ Roland at, 44. • 



Ron sard, 361. 

Eosbach, the battle of, 499. 

Hoscelin, 265. 

Eosebecque, battle of, 172. 

Rosny, Marquis of. See Sully. 

Rouault, Marshal Joachim, 205- 

Rouen, captured by the English, recap- 
tured from the English by Dunois, 
1449, 123; siege of, by Henry IV., 328. 

Rousseau, birth, character, and works of, 
527-529. 

Rouvre, Philip de, Duke of Burgundy. 161. 

Rovera, Julian della. See Pope Julhis II. 

Roze, Chevalier, and the plague in Mar- 
seilles, 459. 

Russia and the Partition of Poland, 1772, 
510. 

Rnyter, Admiral, 381. 

Ryswick, the Peace of, 1697, 386, 387. 



Saint Andre, Marshal de, killed at the 
battle of Dreux, 294. 

Saint Bartholomew, The, and the Re- 
formers, incidents of the Massacre of, 
300-303. 

Saint Bernard. See Bernard. 

Saint Cyran, M. de, character and work 
of, 351, 352 

Saint Germain-en-Laye, the Peace of, 298. 

Saint Germain, the Duke of, called to the 
Ministry by Louis XVI., his character, 
538. 

Saint Irenseus, 25, 26. 

Saint John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, 
516. 

Saint Louis, or Louis IX., powerful king, 
valiant warrior, splendid knight, and 
true Christian 88; his Christian en- 
thusiasm due to his mother ; aids the 
Crusaders; his illness, 89; leaves for the 
Holy Land, 89 ; winters with his crusade 
in Cyprus, 90 ; lands in Egypt, repulsed 
by the Saracens, his popularity with 
his army, captured bj'the Saracens, 90, 
91 ; arrives with the remnant of his 
army at St. Jean d'Acre, 22 ; hears the 
news of his mother's death, leaves St. 
Jean d'Acre and enters Paris again 
Sept. 7, 1254, 93; starts on his second 
crusade, 94 ; arrives at Tunis and dies 
Aug. 27, 1270, 95 ; " rarest and most 
original on the roll of glorious kings." 
Ill ; description of his person and 
tastes, his marriage with Marguerite, 
daughter of Raymond Beranger, Count 
of Provence, ll2; struggles with the 
great voasals, 113 ; chosen arbiter be- 
tween Henry 1T[. and tlie English 
barous, 114; and Hume's History of 
E H 



6io 



History of France. 



England, 115 ; his interest in the pri- 
vate affairs of his subjects, 115 ; acts of 
legislation and administration of his 
reign, 116 ; and literature, 119 ; mis- 
taken zeal of, and religious liberty, 119, 
120. 

Saint Omer kept by France, 382. 

Saint-Queutin, captured by Philip II. of 
ISpain, 281. 

Saint Pierre, Eustace de, 148. 

, Abbe, 514. 

's, Bernardin de, Paul and Yir- 

ginii, 554. 

Saidt Pol, death of, 212. 

Saint Pothinus, 25. 

Saladin, Sultan, puts an end to the Chris- 
tian rule in Jerusalem, 117. 

Sales, St. Francis de, aud the Introduction 
to a Devout Life, 360. 

Salian Franks, the, 28,. 29. 

Salic Law, the, 133. 

Saracens, the, and Charlemagne, their 
invasion of Southern Graul, 44. 

Sardinia, captured by Admiral Leake, 391. 

Saunders, English governor of Madras, and 
Dupleix, 4^4. 

Savoy, Duke Charles of, and Charles VIII., 
222. 

, Louise of See LovAse of Savoy. 

, the Duke of, and Louis XIII., 357. 

Saxe, Marshal, character of, 475 ; at the 
battle of Fontenoy, 475. 

Saxons, the, defeated by Charlemagne, 43. 

Saxony, Augustus II. of, is secured the 
crovrn of Poland by Russia and Austria, 
465. 

, conquered by Frederick the 

Great, 499. 

Scaiiger, J. C, 268. 

Scarron, Madame. See Madame de Main- 
tenon. 

Schomberg, Count Gaspard de, 320. 

, Marshal, and the siege of Lon- 
donderry, 385. 

School of the Palace, formed by Charle- 
magne, 50. 

Scottish Cameronians, the, compared to 
the Cami sards, 413. 

Scudery and the Cid, 365. 

Seig-nelay, M de, character of, 406. 

Semblan9ay, Baron de, 250. 

SeneflFe, the battle of, 1674, 380. 

Senegal settlements, the, ceded to France, 
519. 

Senlac, the English position at the com- 
mencement of the battle of Eastings, 
70. 

Sepoys, the 483. 

Septiuiania, 34. 

Serf.s, enfranchisement of the, by Louis 
the Quarreller, 133. 

Servandoni, 533 



Seven Tears' War, outbreak of the, 497 ; 
end of the, 505. 

Sevigne, Madame de, letters aud opinions 
of, 424, 425. 

Sequanians. the, 11, 12. 

Sforza, Ludovic, duke of Milan, 222. 

, Maximilian, 243. 

Sicarabiians, the, a tribe of the Franks, 
27. 

Sicilian Vespers, the massacre known by 
the name of the, 121. 

Sieyes, Abbe, and the Third Estate, 560, 
565. 

Sigebert, king of the Sipuarian Franks, 
32. 

I. of Metz, 33. 

Simon, Count of Montfort I'Amaury, or 
Simon de Montfort, and the Albi- 
gensian War, 106. 

Sixteen, the Committee of, 313, 321. 

Slavons, the, 43. 

Sluggard Kings, the, 36. 

Sluys. See Ecliise. 

Solimau II., Sultan, 262. 

Song of Roland, the, 4iO, 267. 

Sorbon, Eobert of. Founder of the Sor- 
bonne, 119. 

Sorbonne, the, and the Eeformation, 271 ; 
and Henry III., 314 ; and Buffon, 529. 

Sorel, Agnes, " Queen of Beauty," and 
Charles VII., 192. 

Soubise, the Duke of, captures the French 
fleet, 353. 

, Prince of, defeated by Frederick 

the Great at Eosbach, 419. 

Soufflot, 533. 

Spain and France, treaty between, of 
1761, 503. 

Spinola, celebrated Spanish General, 357. 

Spur , the affair of, 1513, 236. 

Stahrenberg, Count von, 398. 

Stainville, Count. See Choiseiil. 

Stafarde, battle of, 1690, 385. 

Stanhope, Lord, and the fall of Alberoni, 
457. 

Stanisls^us, King, 4^5 ; and the national 
party in Poland defeated, 468. 

States-General (see also Estates -General), 
the first in French history, 129 ; con- 
voked by John II., 150; assembled, 
1358, 159 ; convoked at Tours, Jan. 
5, 1484, 218; convoked at Tours by 
Louis XII., 1506, 230 ; meeting of the, 
at Paris, 1527, 258; of 1560, 290 ; con- 
voked in 1576, 309 ; meeting of the, at 
Blois, 1588, 311 ; of the League, 319, 
322; and Louis XIII., 388; of 1789, 
559. 

Stephanus, Robert Estienne, 268. 

Stephen II., Pope, visits France to obtain 
the aid of Pepin the Short against the 
Lombards, 41. 



Index. 



6ii 



Strasburg captured by Louis XIV., 383, 

387. 

Stuart, Mary, and Francis II., marriage 
of, 280. 

, Charles Edward, lands in the 

Highlands of Scotland, " 1745," short 
account of his career, 476, 477. 

Suevians, 10. 

SufiFren, Peter Andrew de, and French 
successes in the East Indies, 547, 549. 

Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, the Solomon 
of his age, 83, 84. 

Sully, character of, 331 ; and Mary de' 
Medici, 336. 

Surat, 482. 

Swiss Cantons, army of the, defeats 
Charles the Rash at Granson, 209. 

Swiss, the, defeat Charles the Rash at 
Morat, 209 ; invade France and lay 
siege to JDijon, 1513. 235 ; defeated at 
Melegnano by the French under Fran- 
cis I., 244. 

Syagrius, Roman general, 27. 



Tabula Peutingeri, or Chart of the Roman 

Empire, 27. 
Taillebourg, battle of, 113. 
Talbot, Lord, retakes Bordeaux, 1452, 

194 ; death of, at the siege of Castillon, 

195. 
Tallard, Count de, 388 ; defeated at Blen- 
heim, 389. 
Talleyr.ind, Henry de, 341. 
Tavannes, Marshal de, and the Massacre 

of St. Bartholomew, 303. 
Taxation in Prance, temp, Louis XIV., 

400; reforms of the Orleans Regency, 

450. 
Tectosagians, the, 5. 
Teligny, 303. 

Tellier, Le, and Louis XIV., 410. 
Templars, persecutions of the, by Philip 

IV. and the Pope, 130, 131. 
Tende, Count de, 303. 
Terouaniie, the Franks of, 32. 
Terrail, Peter du, the Chevalier Bayard. 

See Bayard. 
Teiray, Abbe, extravagant expedients of, 

to fill the Royal treasuiy, 508 ; dis- 
missed by Louis XVI., 533. 
Theobald IV., Count of Champagne and 

Blanche of Castillo, 113. 
Theodebert, King of Austrasia. 34. 
Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, killed, 28. 

or Thierry I. of Metz, 33. 

Tlieodulph, scholar. 50. 

Theresa, Maria (see also Ma/ria), 469, 470, 

475, 495. 
Thierry III., 37. 
IV,, 40. 



Third Estate, the, and the Communes, dif- 
ferences between, 131 ; and French 
civilization, 136, 137 ; and Louis XVI., 
560 

Thirty Years' War, end of the, 368. 

Thou, Nicholas de, arrested, condemned 
to death, and executed, 344, 345. 

Tiberias, terrible battle at, between Sala- 
din and the Crusaders, 84 

Tiberius, the policy of, in Gaul, 18, 

Tippoo Sahib, 547. 

Tobago, ceded to France, 549. 

Tolbiac, battle of, between Clovis and the 
AUemanians, 29. 

Tostig, rebellion of, 70. 

Tours, truce concluded at, between the 
English and French, 14il., 193. 

Tourville, defeats the English and Dutch 
fleets off Beachy Head, 385. 

Trajan, 19. 

Transalpine Gaul, the first Roman settle- 
ment in, B.C. 123, 8. 

Trans tamare. Prince Henry of, and Gues- 
clin, 165. 

Tremoille, Louis de la, and Anne de Beau- 
jeu, 220 ; in Italy with Charles VIII., 
224; seut to command the troops of 
Louis XI [. in Italy, 228 ; at the battle 
of Agnadello, 231 ; and the revolt of 
Charles II. of Bourbon, 251. 

, George de la, favourite of 

Charles VII., 187. 

Trianon, the Manor-House of, residence of 
Marie Antoinette, 551. 

Triple Alliance, the, signed at the Hague, 
377. 

Trivulzio, John James, at the battle of 
Fornovo, 224; and Louis XII., 227; at 
the battle of Agnadello, 231. 

Troyes. treaty of, between the English ard 
the Burgundians, 182. 

Truce of God, the, 64. 

Tuileries, the, and Louis XIV., 403. 

Turckheim, fight of, 380. 

Turenne, Viscount de, 369, 380, 381. 

, M de, and Louvois, 404. 

Turgot, M., the Ministry of, and Louis 
XVI., 532 ; acts of his Ministry, 535, 
536 ; dismissed by Louis XVI., 539 ; so- 
licitations of the American colonies for 
aid against England, 541. 

Turin, the siege of, 1706, 390. 

Turnebius 268. 

Turpiu, Archbishop, 45. 

Tuscany, the Grand Duke of, proclai.ned 
Emperor as Francis L, 470. 

U. 

Ultramontanes, the, and Cardinal Eiche- 

Heu, 352. 
Unigenitus, the bull, 416. 



6l2 



History of France. 



Union, the, of the sixteentli century, 

308 
United Provinces, the, and Eichelieu, 355. 
UDited States of Ameiica, and the war of 

Independence, 540 — 543. 
University of Paris and Philip Augustus, 

110; and Charlemagne, 49 j and the 

Concordat, 247. 
JJnterwcdden, the cow of, 209. 
Urban II., Pope, and Peter the Hermit 

74, 75. 
IV., Pope, receives the county of 

Venaissin of Phillip III. of France, 122. 
TJri, the hull of, 209 
Urpins, the Princess des, 441. 
Ursulines, 351. 
Utrecht, the Treaty of, between England, 

the Allies, and Prance, 1712, 396, 397. 



Valenciennes, capture of, 381. 
Valentine, Visconti, wife of the Duke of 

Orleans, 176. 
Valois, Joan of, 212. 
, Prince Henry of, son of Francis I., 

marries Catherine de' Medici, 1533, 260. 
-, Marguerite de, 271. 



Valteline. the war in the, and Richelieu, 

356, 357. 
Van Artevelde, 142. 
Vassy, the massacre of, 292, 
Vatable (Watebled), 268. 
Vauban, the celebrated engineer, his work 

and Louis XIV., 404, 405. 
Vaudians, persecution and massacre of 

the, 273. 
Vaux, Marshal, 557. 
Vendome, the Duke of, 388, 390; defeated 

by Marlborough at Oudenarde, 391 ; 

sent to the aid of Philip V. of Spain, 393. 
Venetians, the, and Louis XII., 228 ; de- 
feat of, by Lonis XII. at Agnadello, 231. 
Venice, the Republic of, and Charles 

VIII., 222 ; and the Venetians in 1509, 

251. 
Ventadour, Madame de, 448. 
Vercingetorix heads the Gauls in their 

rising against the Romans, 13, 14. 
Verdun, the Treaty of, 57. 
Vergennes, M. de, 540, 541, 542. 
Vergne, Madelaine de la. Marchioness of 

La Payette. See La Fayette. 
Versailles, the Palace of, built by Louis 

XIV., 403 
Vervins, Peace of, between France and 

Spain, 329. 
Vesontio (BesanQon), the town of, 3. 
Vezelay, 81. 
Vic, Henry de, constructs for Charles V. 

the first public clock ever seen in 

France, 171. 



Yillehardouin, Geoffrey de, one of the 
earliest and best of French writers, 267. 

Villeneuve la Hardie, Edward III. of Eng- 
land's temporary town round Calais, 
148. 

Vien, painter, 532. 

Vienna, the Peace of, 1735, and its condi- 
ditions, 467. 

Vienue, John de, governor of Calais dur- 
ing its siege by Edward III., 148. 

Villars, Andrew de Brancas, Lord of, 325, 
326. 

, Marshal, 388, 390 ; and the battle 

of Malplaquet, 393; and the battle of 
Denain, 395, 396 ; and the revolt of the 
Camisards, 413. 

Villeroi, Nicholas de Neufville, Lord of, 
character of, 332. 

, Marshal, 388, 389 ; defeated by 

Marlborough, 389. 

Villon, Francis, 269. ' 

Visconti, John Galeas, Duke of Milan, 161. 

Visigoths, the, 18. 

Viterbo, the Treaty of, between Francis I. 
and Pope Leo X , 245. 

Vitry, 80. 

, Baron de, 337. 

Vivonne, the Duke of, 381. 

Voltaire, 515 ; and the execution of Lally, 
487 ; his campaign against the Chris- 
tian faith, 5M ; and Frederick the 
Great, 518 ; imprisoned in the Bastille, 
515 ; in England, 516; and Madame du 
Chatelet, 517 ; in Switzerland, 519 ; acts 
of humanity of, 520 ,' returns to Paris, 
and is enthusiastically welcomed, 521 ; 
and the Encyclopaedists, 522. 

Vouet, Simon, 434. 

Vouille, battle of, between Clovis and 
Alaric, 31. 

Voysin, Chancellor, 406, 407. 

W. 

Waldensians. See Vaudians. 

Wales, the Prince of, son of Edward III., 
also called Edward the Black Prince, 
at Crecy, 146 ; and John Chandos, 151 ; 
defeats and captures John II. of France 
at Poictiers, 152 ; with John Chandos, 
enters Spain with an army of 27,000 
men, 165 ; creates discontent in Aqui- 
taine by his imposts, 167 ; declares 
war with Charles V., 167. 

Walpole, Robert, and Fleury, 465. 

Warsaw, the Treaty of, providing for the 
partition of Poland, 511. 

Washington, his mistrust of French aid 
to America, 542 ; and La Fayette, 543 ; 
forces Lord Cornwallis to capitulate at 
Torktown, 545. 

Watebled, Francis. See Vatable. 



Index. 



613 



Webtp^alia, the Peace of, and its conse- 
quences, 368 ; the Peace of, recognized 
by Spain, 374. 

William of Normandy, the Conqueror, see 
also Normandij ; 66-73. 

William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and 
the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, 281. 

III. of England, lands in Ireland 

and gains the battle of the Boyne, over 
James II. and the French, 385 ; and the 
naval defeat off Beachy Head, 385 ; and 
the Treaty of Ryswick, 387 ; death of, 
388. 

Witt, John and Cornelius van, assassinated, 
379. 

Wittikind, Saxon Chieftain, 43. 

Wolfe, General, and the siege of Quebec, 
493. 



Woollen Trade, the, of Flanders, with 
England, 123. 

World, end of the, expected by the Chris- 
tians, A.D. 1000, 64. 

Worms, general assembly convoked at, by 
Loais the Debonnair, i.D. 839, 50. 



Xaintrailles, 187. 



Yorktown, capitulation of Lord Cornw|iI' 

lis at, 1781, 546. 
Ypres, taken by Louis XIV., 382. 



Zachary, Pope, 41, 
Zwingle, 271. 



Z. 



THE END. 



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